Lotta Weiner in this post — Zach Weiner that is, who has a new sketch comedy show thingy (teaser here). The show will debut with a new website that launches concurrent with an Amusement-o-Rama (some might say, “concert”) to run Saturday night at San Diego Comic Con. Said live extravaganza will feature Weiner, the Cyanide & Happiness dudes, MC Lars, MC Frontalot, and YTCracker. I’ll be there, will you? Tickets on sale now.

• Everybody see the Harvey nominations this morning? Others have commented in the past on the tendency of one title to dominate the nominations (cf: last year three Disney/duck titles from Gemstone took a total of 12 nominations out of a total of 21 categories … 20 if you consider they weren’t eligible for Best On-Line Comic), but it’s really odd that Buzzboy (an entirely worthy endeavour, to be sure) shows in five categories when it doesn’t appear to have been published in 2008, and the prominence of Zuda offerings in the Best New Series and Best Online Work categories.

  All the same, congrats to David Malki !, Ryan Sohmer & Lar DeSouza, and the Halfpixel crüë for their nominations. Plus, now Master of Ceremonies Scott Kurtz will have two separate occasions to either present an award to himself, or comment on how he didn’t win — I’m guessing that he’ll make either outcome pretty damn funny. The awards will be, uh, awarded at Baltimore Comic-Con on October 10th.

• Howard Tayler branches out from self-publishing to regular publishing tomorrow, with the launch of pre-orders for a non-Schlock offering. If you’re of the RPG-type of geek, XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery (by Tracy and Curtis Hickman) may be of interest to you. If you’re not that type of geek, you might still like Tayler’s pretty pictures. And if you prefer Tayler’s webcomic efforts to his publishing company mogul efforts, the first Schlock Mercenary book is going to a second printing, with the usual sketch edition available for pre-orderers. Have at it.
• So Miss Lutrinae¹ tipped me to a new academic journal (or book, the website appears to use both terms in different places) out of Monash University (which is mostly located in and around Melbourne, Victoria, Strailya) — Drawing The Line: Using Cartoons As Historical Evidence. It covers the full range of historical cartoons and how they document the times they live in (lots of stuff for you Punch fans, looks like), but the relevant part to this discussion is Chapter 11: ‘Teh futar’, in which author Marianne Hicks (Monash Johannesburg, South Africa) looks at comics of the webby variety.

  Your humble correspondent is cited in conjunction with the Matt Boyd: Terroristic Threatener incident and the Ted Rall: All Webcomics Should Be Taken Off The Web panel. There’s also discussion of what constitutes a webcomic, how the medium skews towards pale-complected North American voices (not sure I agree with that, but okay), and the achievements of Child’s Play. Oh, and as it’s an academic publication, slightly less than half the 25 pages are notes and references.

  I’ve managed a quick skim through ‘Teh Futar’ today, and so far I wish that Hicks had contacted me (or anybody in our community) for feedback and up-to-date information — for instance, a reference to women making webcomics misses out some prominent names and another states flatly that John Allison is the only person outside the United States to make a living from webcomics. Far more seriously, the references consistently identify a Mr Gary Tyrell (future wikifiddlers please note there are two Rs in my family name), but as we’re still a new field for academic examination we’ll let it slide this time.²

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¹ Previously, I have referenced the creator of A Girl And Her Fed by way of family Mustilidae, but I realize that this nomenclature properly identifies weasels, badgers, minks, and other critters besides the relevant otters. Thus, subfamily Lutrinae, which consists solely of otters.
² Seriously though. One of Australia’s premiere (and still family-owned) wineries was founded by (we figure) distant cousins who also spell “Tyrrell” with two Rs. Granted, the Hunter Valley is in NSW and not Victoria, and Hicks is from South Africa but still … two Rs, people. Although a free copy of the book might go a long way to soothing my aggrieved family pride.