Shall we talk milestones? Yes, I believe that we shall.

• Twisted Musings, Australia’s finest in single-panel-gag webstrippery, has just hit 300 updates and two years without blowing deadline even once. Woo! Similarly, Business Casual just passed six years of funny-bringing. Congrats to creators Jason Frazer and Joe Combs.
• Of course, some people aren’t satisfied with just one creative endeavour. Case in point: AP. Furtado has variously produced ‘TWEEN and Elf ‘n’ Troll, both of which simply ooze a Vaughn Bodé aesthetic (complete runs of which are now available in non-electronic form).

  But now Furtado’s got a new webcomic, with a very different feel: Major Tom eschews the wizardy/fantasy feel of the earlier works and goes straight into space with a nod to Jodorowsky, Moebius, and all those cool Métal Hurlant stories that somehow seemed less classy when translated to Heavy Metal.

  Right now, chapter one is up and chapter two is pending, with an update schedule of “whole chapters go up at once”. That means it’ll be timed irregularly, but you’ll get a nice big chunk of story all at once — fair tradeoff if you ask me.

So, do you read Mark Evanier‘s stuff? He’s been in various parts of the comics/animation/TV/you name it industries for longer than a lot of you have been alive. He’s a consummate storyteller, and very, very funny. He’s also scary-smart, in that way you only become after having seen a lot of mistakes (some of them yours) played out in front of you. I’ve been reading his stuff for a long-damn-time.

But Krishna Sadasivam linked to a piece of Evanier’s that I hadn’t read in way too long, and it’s too good not to share. In fact, if the only thing Evanier had ever written was The Speech, he’d still be one of the smartest observers of the entertainment biz that’s ever lived. If you’re creative, dream of being creative, or really do anything of any sort whatsoever, and want to break into your Dream Job, you need to read it. Don’t worry that it’s nearly ten years old on the web (and far older if you know Evanier in person) — it’s timeless.

• MoCCA information is coming fast and furious these days — an exhibitor list is now up (webcomics-related types include ACT-I-VATE, various Dumbrellites, Comics Bakery, Lucy Knisley, Kate Beaton, David Malki !, Spike, Meredith Gran, various New Jersey reprobates Canadians tall dudes, New Zealand expats, and viewers like you), and programming information is below the cut. My apologies to anybody I might have missed — too many names on that page. Also of interest is a new piece of information this year — where to eat in the neighborhood (although it’s on the same page as the sure-to-be-horrifying news that there is no WiFi at the venue).
• And for those of you who like awesome comics, please join me in wishing Digger creator Ursula Vernon a very happy birthday.

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Remember what I said yesterday about getting to know new webcomics? Got that in spades today. First up, a missive from Elan’ Rodger Trinidad who wrote:

I’m an Eisner Nominee for Best Digital Comic

Quick pause here — Trinidad’s nomination is for Speak No Evil (subtitled Melancholy of a Space Mexican) and it’s some really great work. The story is imaginative and compelling, and the art reminds me of reading third-hand, months-old issues of 2000 A.D. back in the late ’80s. It’s less than 40 pages long, and you should go read it now. I’ll wait.

Back? Okay, good. On with the email:

and I just wanted to share with you my newest project: God™- (the abridged title).

Me again. The full title is God™-^©2xx8 [blurred] Incorporated. All rights reserved. God and all related characters, titles, names and documents are trademarks of [blurred] Incorporated. No similarity between any of the names, characters, persons and/or institutions in this deity with those of any living or dead person or institutions is intended and any such similarity which may exist is purely coincidental. Keep an eye on where it says [blurred] and be prepared to read between the lines:

Some day the intellectual property of God will be owned by a media, entertainment, and theme park corporation that rhymes with “Malt Crispy”. The Apocalypse is looming and it’s up to Reverend Joeb Kim, an ordained minister in the Sacred Order of Accounting, to stop it.

Trinidad says he’s going for a Hitchhiker’s Guide vibe, and he pretty much succeeds in conveying the absurdism you’d find in the Nerd Bible, but his corporate satire is sharper than what Douglas Adams wrote. I’m picking up overtone vibes of Snow Crash and Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!; just check out the sequence where our hero has to decide whether to order the Very Large Coffee Franchise‘s new offering, Dirt in Hot Waterâ„¢ … or decaf. Click forward for the next few pages and revel in the adspeak. This is the sort of satire that is designed on a genetic level to appeal to me.

By the way, webcomic creators are eligible to vote for the Eisners. I know your money is on Carla Speed McNeil, but if this news about webcomic creators voting is new to you and you want to let everyone know it on your blog, at least do me a favor and do a fair review on one of my comics.

Done, and done! Trinidad’s right that my non-existant vote is for Carla Speed McNeil, but if you’re eligible to vote give Speak No Evil all due consideration because it’s damn good (and slightly nightmarish) work. And God™? Going to be keeping a very close eye on this one — I get the feeling that when Trinidad sets his sights on a target ripe for ridicule, his Wacom stylus transforms into something like a surgical scalpel grafted onto a blunt weapon. A+++++ WOULD TAUNT LARGE CORPORATE ENTITIES AGAIN.

Speaking of new strips, may I point you to Much the Miller’s Son? Think Groo the Wanderer starring one of the minor characters of the Robin Hood legend, with an art style that crosses Aragones with ’70s-era Peyo; right now it seems that the links to the first chapter (The Good, The Bad, and Much), but the second chapter (The Archery Contest) is a real treat, so please enjoy. The site’s been a little wonky for me, but that may be a side effect of the massive re-tweeting it got yesterday.

Okay, so that’s three webcomics you have to get caught up on or we can’t be friends. You didn’t have anything important to do at work today, did you? Awesome.

First Krishna Sadasivam, then Onezumi & Harknell — one more webcomicker in a motor vehicle accident, and it’ll officially be a meme with its own Livejournal page. Remember kids — always buckle up and assume that everybody else on the road is a suicidal idiot without the least idea how to operate a vehicle and thus best given a wide berth.

Happier thoughts: Johanna Draper Carlson has a copy of Erika Moen‘s new book, and has reviewed it up better than I ever could. Also, I am a lazy, lazy man who hasn’t gotten around to ordering a copy of DAR volume one yet despite my clear instructions that you do so. Lame excuse: I prefer buying things directly from artists when I can; it’s much more enjoyable that interacting with Mr PayPal … but really I just keep forgetting, and will likely forget again until I actually see Moen and stacks of the book in front of me. Unfortunately, she and I will likely not be in the same place at the same time before SPX. On the plus side, this means that I will probably have forgotten the much better reviews of DAR by then, and can write about it myself in good conscience.

One of the nicer side-effects of banging out this vaguely informative prose each day is that I get exposed to a lot of new webcomics. A lot a lot, and while many don’t grab me (or fold between me getting the email and slotting them into the posting schedule), some grow and thrive and hit milestones of success. There’s an almost indefineable quality to some of these webcomics, where you can almost see the satisfaction that their creators derive from doing them. So let me point you towards one of those today, which hit a milestone recently:

Ravilob, the little town that awesome built, turned a year old recently. In that time, it’s grown from a four panel black and white humor comic to a full page in color; it’s not the most polished art or most complex story you’re going to see, but both are developing nicely and creator Casey Williams is clearly pushing himself to improve his first attempt at an ongoing comic. And there ain’t a damn thing wrong with that.

Emergency cookout at my place, so you get something really brief, those three of you actually reading this.

• Erfworld goes double-size, with an end-of-book strip encapsulating a significant moment. Nice job, all around guys. It’s currently here, but will soon be in the archives here.
• Also, if you were to ask me who my very favorite webcomics character is RIGHT NOW, I think I’d have to say Fuschia Devil-Girl. Yesterday’s Sinfest was an absolute treat.

I have two brief stories to tell you, and they intersect in a way that’s been turning over in my head of late; time to get the ideas out where they can play in the sunshine.

I saw something at a comics show (no names, but it was a big one) that’s bugged me ever since — a pretty famous comic book illustrator (pencilling, covers, you name it) for the Big Two was showing/selling pages and originals from this comics work, and had a steady stream of fans wanting to talk about how great his work was and how much they loved it. He also had some art there from a side project — a webcomic, all his, not playing with characters that have been around for fifty or sixty years. Beautiful, personal, wonderful stuff … and the capes fans were having none of it.

He’d point it out, talk about how much he loved doing it, and the attention immediately went back to the splash panel of famous characters beating the crap out of each other. They were fans, absolutely, but it seemed they were fans of the book or the character, or the artist’s particular interpretation of the character. The disconnect between their interests and his was practically tangible.

POV shift: some years ago, I was flipping through a Free Comic Book Day issue of something or other, and on the inside back cover, there was a list of TV shows and movies, paired with comics. The idea being, if you knew somebody that didn’t read comics but liked a particular story, here is something they’d probably dig. It was an attempt to bridge the disconnect between non-comics-readers and the world of comics; IF YOU LIKE X, it said, TRY READING Y (and Y: The Last Man was one of the recommendations, for fans of Lost).

That bridging has happened a few times … Stephen King and Buffy fans have (respectively) buoyed sales of the Dark Tower adaptation and the Joss-approved “Season Eight” comics. But I keep coming back to that one artist who couldn’t bridge what should have been a much smaller gap — after all, the difference between comics and webcomics can’t be that great, can it?

I prefer to think at this time, it’s a matter of education. If a fan of JLA or The Avengers doesn’t know that there are webcomics they might enjoy, we can’t expect them to check them out. So I’ve been throwing around a mental list of IF YOU LIKE X and TRY READING Y, which I submit for your consideration and suggestions; it’s down below the cut.

Before you check out the list (and help me out, because there’s a whole lot of suggestions that I’d never come up with on my own), there’s a a quote I’d like to point you at, from the 3rd part of Shaenon Garrity‘s Ghibli trip report:

Now I’m back in the States, and my friends all want to know what Hayao Miyazaki was like. My friends are cartoonists, writers, artists, editors. They are amazing people. Not a single one has not been touched by Miyazaki’s films and comics. He is loved by top animators at Pixar. He is loved by struggling webcartoonists. There is such love in his work. It makes you see the joy of living, and the joy of making art, and that these two things are not so different. It makes you want to live and build.

Someday, yes, Miyazaki will die. And when that happens we will pick up our pencils and brushes and Wacom styluses and carry on his work. There is only one Miyazaki, just as there’s only one Totoro with the umbrella. But the sky is full of Totoros. All different.

Have a good weekend, and those of you in Freedomland, enjoy the holiday on Monday.
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Good news first.

• You people can still surprise me. Case in point, the following email received on Tuesday evening from Joshua Jericho:
  

  I wanted to offer my first double-stack comic for the top image for Wed’s post if you’re interested. I realize it’s last minute and I don’t really have any ‘news’ to go with it — but I think it’s a great comic myself (and I’m only 112% biased). So, if you have nothing else immediate please consider me! Either way, thanks for considering and keep up the great work!!

  Joshua, that’s the most blatant self-promotion I can recall in a long time, and such moxie must be rewarded — your image would have appeared yesterday, but for breaking news of great import (c’mon, Wigu), but I trust a day late is still good enough. For any other self-promoting creators who might try the same, sorry … Joshua got there first, and that’s the only time we’re going to honor this particular request.

• Scary Go Round book 7, Peloton, is up for pre-order. The first 400 orders will receive a special mini-comic of the adventures of the now-erased-from-existence Erin Winters.
• Speaking of books, here’s one that is (for the moment) theoretical, but worth your investigation. Phil and Kaja Foglio have, for going on two years now, been running the early-to-mid-90s Buck Godot story, Gallimaufry. It’s now approaching the end, which means we should see it collected in a nice, fat trade edition soon. Given the sheer insane goodness of the Buck Godot tales, you should definitely be reading if you haven’t been (it’s never too late to start), and should begin saving for the book. It’s only fair.
• The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art are starting to send around information about this year’s Fest to we pixel-stained wretches, so perhaps my pique-ishness over them not replying to enquires was premature. Good to see that things are on the ball, and forward to the show.

Okay, the bad.

• Think idiotic oppression over your reading material won’t affect you? Think again. Overzealous prosecutor + some of the links over there to the right = you in federal prison for up to 15 years. Next show you’re at a show with a CBLDF table, a few bucks in the donation can would be good — even better, take out a membership and make your voice heard.

TCAF doesn’t have a monopoly on the “CAF” suffix when it comes to comics shows. For instance, this past weekend was MeCAF, the Maine Comics Art Festival, which is in Portland (the one in Maine, not the one in Oregon, which has its own very nice comics festival).

It was the first in what will hopefully be an annual series of MeCAFs, so the website is pretty much that of the organizers, Casablanca Comics of Portland. Fine con reports have gone up in the past few days from Heidi MacDonald, Alexander Danner, and Kean Soo. By all accounts, it was a fine/fun show, and Soo let slip a hint of his next project now that the Jellaby books are done: the adventures of a fact-checking octopus. This has got to be years from arrival in stores and I want to read it yesterday.

• Book signing! David Malki ! of Wondermark fame will be signing in Los Angeles on June 17th; more precisely, in Beverly Hills; even more precisely, at the terribly swank Crescent Hotel. If memory serves correctly, the Crescent has served as the site for previous webcomics book launches, which means it may be in contention as the new official swank hotel of webcomics, if the current titleholder doesn’t step up its game.
• Scott Campbell wrote to say howdy; this was dang cool, because his work is so very, very good. And now you can share in the goodness, as he’s now the author of Double Fine Action Comics and will hopefully have copies to bring to MoCCA. PS: Scott Your work is awesome please make it easier to find and maybe put it in your store because it’s not there.
• Neither book, nor fest: Wigu returns!

Things can happen very quickly on The Twitters:

Outcome: Awesome. Todays strip, borne of desperation, made me giggle like a little kid. Well done.

• Speaking of Twitters, John Campbell has turned his new account into a forum for serialized insanity; it’s like reading a non-drawn version of his comic. And with Josh Fruhlinger‘s new Twitter account, it’s Aldomania every day!
• Friend of webcomickry Rick I Hate That Stupid Movie And It’s Not Even Out Yet Marshall has managed to get his semiregular MTV Splash Page feature on comics that should be movies over to the web side o’ things — Dr McNinja‘s a good start, but I really want to see his take on Templar.
• As learned from various shadowy sources, the “person” known as Eben07 may or may not exist, and may or may not be responsible for a similarly-named webcomic. Nevertheless, Eben07 (the person or persons) has reached a milestone with Eben07 (the comic); the following is an excerpt from a dossier received by Fleen via methods that we are not at liberty to disclose at this time:
  

  Our comic, Eben07, will be releasing a collection of the episode Operation: For the Love of Russia on June 7th. It is a 52 page full color book with a trade-paperback style cover for $10.

  [redacted] features all the comics from Operation: For the Love of Russia (many of which were redesigned to read and feel more like a comic book page) including the guest comics from Jason Zuckerman and Stephen Lindsay and Lauren Monardo, as well as a “never to be released on the web” epilogue that divulges [redacted].

  [redacted] be selling it in person at the Sacramento Comic Convention on June 7th as special guest invites (I think we’re the only web-based comic that’s going to have a special guest table, but [redacted].

  Fleen readers are advised that the one-eyed dog barks at midnight, and that location “SCC” is go. Repeat, SCC is go.

Those paying attention to Twitter over the weekend already heard — Horribleville is no more. Creator KC Green has been reunited with his brain, and apparently continues to make comics, but that’s all we’ll ever see. A moment of silence, please.

I’m so depressed.

Hey! Lookit the puppies!