There is now officially no resolution time for my broadband outage at home, making Gary a cranky guy. As my employer prefers I work at work, this severely cramps the amount of webcomic reading I’m getting in, so forgive if this is thin.

• On the convention front, TCAF (consistently rated by participants as one of the top shows of the year) goes from every-other-year to annual in 2010, and applications are available now. In the past, TCAF has been an invitation show, but the demand (and size of the show) have grown to the point that the organizers are asking all desirious of exhibiting to fill in the form; these will then be looked over in a juried process, and those that fit in best will be given space. Deadline is 15 November, but you know what they say about early birds and worms.
• In a similar vein, if you’ve noticed a gradual coalescing of webcomics into a defined area at San Diego Comic Con, a lot of the credit for that can be given to Phil Foglio, who’s been planting the idea in the brains of those responsible for booth assignment for literally years. It’s worked so well that Foglio now informs us that the grouping logic is now being extended to Wondercon in San Francisco.

  People who are exhibiting at Wondercon and want to be in the webcomics section should make their preference known to Justin Dutta, floor manager; a quick list of your URLs for confirmation would be a good idea. And if you should see either Dutta or Foglio, be sure to thank ’em for making it easier to find the webcomickers. And hey — if this continues to work well at SDCC and does well at WC, and other con organizers hear that the exhibitors are grateful and — oh, I dunno, promoting the shows on their websites, offering to do posters or badge art or program covers or whatever — maybe it’ll spread.

• Also speaking of conventions, there’s one coming up in Mary-land end of next week, where you may find a slightly dazed John Allison trying to get other webcomickers to stand still long enough to refine their portraits. Apart from poor Doc Hastings, I’d say that Allison has done a bang-up job portraying everybody in the community that he’s encountered so far. Soon we’ll see what the SGR successor is, which I can only pray involves barn owls.
• Finally, the burst of guest comics that came about as a result of the Nerd Flu appears to be tapering off. I have a feeling that today may be the last of them; for my money, Becky and Frank of Tiny Kitten Teeth win guest strippery forever, producing the most in-character evil cat (and bassets!) and keeping up the tradition of torturing Gabe. Go over to TKT and keep in mind that what you’re looking at is gouache and ink on paper; it’s simply insane that such fluid lines and vibrant colors don’t have a million “undo” edits behind them, but they don’t. They’re physical. Hey major publishers and animation studios, why are you not throwing money at these two?

In retrospect, my internet at home being nonfunctional (smokin’ hot signal, no DNS) and the prospect of sitting on the line with a first-level “support” “technician” to go through multiple reboots only to determine that the problem isn’t on my end should have been a tip-off. Almost nothing of interest going on today.

The sick and wounded from PAX continue to heal. The great drama and fights are absent. It’s still days to go until Estradarama and It’s Wedding!, and naught occurs in our scrappy little community but a few instances of quiet accomplishment due to diligent effort. BO-RING. Well, let’s at least acknowledge those bits of accomplishment, and hope that somebody has a meltdown before deadline tomorrow.

• Red String — through six years (or so), thirty-five chapters (or so), three Dark Horse books (or so), Gina Biggs has been cranking out the pages and just crossed the 1000 mark. Daunting backlog o’ comics, but oh so worth it to get caught up.
• Know what might make it easy to get caught up? Archive Binge. Since the free RSS-based catch-up service launched ’bout two weeks ago, a stack of new comics have been added to the service, including more than 2500 episodes of Goats and nearly 3400 of Schlock Mercenary. Also on the list since the last time I looked: the pure nerdery of Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, adding more than 2000 strips between ’em. Dig in.
• Speaking of xkcd, volume 0 is on sale as of today, and for the first 24 hours you can order your copy signed for an extra ten bob; unsigned copies will start shipping tomorrow. I got mine on order, do you?

It rolls off the tongue at least as well as the its-almost-here Estrada Day (although not, I grant you, as well as Estradarama or The Estradaganza).

• Anyhoo, Gordon McAlpin (my sporting bet nemesis) dropped some multimedia goodness on the Tubes end of last week — if books can have trailers, why not webcomics? And, since I mentioned books, I would be remiss in not mentioning that Gordo’s got the first Multiplex book in the works and available for your support:
  

  The first of the five Chapter eBooks that will be collected into the Multiplex: Book 1 print book has long been available, but a second is pretty late, because of how much new material it has and how little time I have to work on it.

  Enter: Kickstarter and the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome. By pledging any amount over $1 to join the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome, pledgers will help me take some time off from my (wonderful, but time-consuming!) day job in order to complete the print book — and, more importantly, pay for the print run of the book itself.

  These are not donations, though — absolutely not! In exchange for your pledges, you’ll receive AWESOME! REWARDS!

  My funding goal is $7,500. Pledges will be taken until December 11th — a.k.a. the moment of truth. If the funding goal is met or surpassed, I get the money (after a two-week or so processing time), less credit card fees, and I can get down to business. If the funding goal is not reached, nobody gets charged — I don’t get anything. (If I only get $3000 in pledges, I wouldn’t be able to afford a print run.)

  Multiplex is the first webcomic attempting to fund a project through Kickstarter, so hopefully this will get some traction in the webcomic world. (Several musicians and filmmakers have successfully funded larger projects already.)

  To sum: it’s like giving to PBS or NPR, and there’s books, t-shirts, and other swag that’s frankly much cooler than a tote bag (although to be fair, much worse at carrying your groceries home from the market). Details at the Kickstarter page linked above.

• Speaking of multiple forms of media, Mike Russell‘s got the latest of his interview-into-webcomics deals up, this one about Steve Lieber’s experiences getting the graphic novel Whiteout (illustrated by Lieber, written by Greg Rucka) made into the just-released movie and what it’s like to see the process finally finished:
  

  … It’s almost impossible not to let yourself think, “Now I’m a big deal.” But you wake up and you’re still the same [redacted] — and the only difference is that there’s a movie out there that people think you adapted into a comic.

  It’s part of the deal … they’re gonna buy me half a house, I’m going to have to eat some [redacted], you know?

  So that you understand the effort that Russell goes to, these thirteen panels were condensed down from a full hour and a half of conversation, which you may read at your leisure. Me, I’m going to trust that Russell got the good parts from that talk into his comic and content myself with that.

Nasty bit of weather we’re having. Let’s talk some webcomics and wrap up the week.

• I had just about given up on Planet Karen, what with the a period of hiatus before Karen Ellis’s fire, then a long fallow period after the rebuilding, but she popped back up yesterday with a slice of life and today with some musings about Alan Turing. Since Ellis works about a month behind her actual life, the bio on Turing that she read last month was coincidentally run today, the day that the British government apologized for its shameful treatment of Turing.
• The announcement came nearly six months back: xkcd would have a book! Now we have confirmation from Randall Munroe’s blag that the book will be in the xkcd store next week, and that a limited book tour will be there to support the launch. The twist: the tour will involve only three stops, and the ticket pricing is variable, based on demand, and will serve as a fundraiser (along with some of the book’s profits) to help build a school in Laos.

  Details here, along with links to the ticket sites for the tour; unfortunately, I’ll be unable to attend next Saturday’s New York event (apparently to be held in a penthouse in Tribeca), so if anybody wants to report on it for Fleen, be sure to let us know.

  Oh, and side note — the sign-in for ticket purchase (“auction”, really) didn’t work for me with my (according to Google, officially-supported) browser (Opera 9.64), so you may have to try IE to get anywhere. You an always wash your hands afterwards.

• Alexa Kitchen might be the youngest pro cartoonist out there (and personally speaking, a really sweet kid), but I think that Howard Tayler‘s daughter Keliana (previously known by the nom de internet of “Kiki”) may now be the youngest pro webcartoonist:
  

  Keliana as we have long called her in blogs, has been working on a mixed media coloring method involving Copic markers, Prismacolor pencils, and a blending agent called Gamsol. The colors really have to be seen in person to be appreciated. The scan doesn’t do this picture justice.

  Anyway, this is the very first of our collaborations. Yes, there will be more. I’m sure they will get better with time. But this is the first, and as of this writing only collaboration between Kiki and I. The picture is up for auction, and my girl and I will be splitting the proceeds 50/50.

  With more than two days left, that auction is up to nearly $300 as of this writing, meaning that young Ms Tayler may be seeing some real concrete benefit from having my evil twin as her dad. I’m sure there are all kinds of intangible benefits, including a solid, loving upbringing and lots of dad-time, but now we’re talking the possibility of multiple benjamins in the immediate future, with the possibility of an ongoing income stream. Neat.

• Devoured Worst Song, Played On Ugliest Guitar last night; in all honesty I feel like I wound up in a different place than I expected to be. The book was described as containing an extensively annotated collection of the first few years’ worth of Achewood comics, and while it is extensively annotated (more on that in a minute), it contains strips from 1 October 2001 to 7 May 2002 — far less than years worth. The cover features the spaceship that Roast Beef rode to the moon, which series doesn’t appear in this book; the title is the same as that of the self-published second book, but this contains slightly fewer strips than the original Volume 1. I wonder if this volume was originally meant to be about twice the size and the title/cover reflected that former state.

  But let’s get this out of the way — ending up in a different place than I’d expected is not the same as ending up in a bad place. The notes attached to most strips reveal Chris Onstad’s feelings towards these early efforts; in a word, “uncomfortable”, enough so that that first three months worth of strips are in a second section, labelled Before We Were Achewood. The author acknowledges Achewood finally becoming Achewood with the strip from 10 January 2002 and the introduction of the cats.

  (Although curiously, several weeks worth of strips from the end of 2001 and the start of 200 are omitted, including the introduction of Blister — we weren’t promised a comprehensive collection of every strip, this is a curious group to be left out, and hopefully to be found in a future volume.)

  The strips run from there to early May, when Beef takes the turn from being a placeholder to being the guy who sucks (plus he got depression) then BOOM. Cliffhanger. We’ll watch Beef become truly Beef in the next book as he becomes revealed as a programmer and his relationship with Ray is established.

  Interspersed throughout the book, Onstad recounts how each of the inhabitants of 62 Achewood Court (Philippe, Mr Bear, Teodor, and Lyle) came to live there, along with a recounting of how Lie Bot came to be Lie Bot, and a promise of the stories of the cats in the next volume. Also, we find out what Teodor’s dirty talkings actually say behind the censor bars! Guys, it is so dirty.

  All in all, WSPOUG isn’t the book I was expecting, but it’s still Achewood, which so rarely goes where I anticipate anyway. And honestly, shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Today marks twelve years of David Willis doing webcomics, starting from Roomies!, through It’s Walky!, onto Joyce and Walky! and Shortpacked!; The Bangmark Quadrilogy, as it were. Throughout that time, from the goofball college humor strip to the sci-fi strip, the relationship strip, and the toy fetishist strip, he’s walked the balancing act between The Funny and The Drama, and indulged perpetually in a carnal desire for Transformers.

Then Willis caps the good times off next weekend by gettin’ married on Talk Like A Pirate Day. Readers are invited to speculate whether Mr Willis will be dressed in the traditional tuxedo, as a pirate, or perhaps as Batman. Y’know, a tuxedo could be justified as “millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne cosplay”.

At the same time, John Allison is but one day away from wrapping up the second of his related strips, Scary Go Round, to be followed by an interval of light music, then onto the start of his own webcomic trifecta. Assuming no disasters on par with the bird flu, Allison will be appearing at SPX in Bethesda, Maryland the very week of his own eleven-year stripperversary, making both Allison and Willis among the oldest of old hands in this young medium.

Given the way this recent SGR strips have been sending off characters (Eshter, The Boy, and Sarah to separate universities, Shelley to London), there are several possibilities for the focus of the next strip: stay in Tackleford with the younger generation, or perhaps with Amy & Ryan. Off to Wales with Tim, off to colleges with that crowd, off to London with Shelley (arguably the center of the past two strips, but surely writing somebody that capricious is tiring after a while). Once again, readers are invited to speculate wildly on Allison’s plans, with the satisfaction of knowing that we’ll all find out how wrong we were in about 10 days time.

For those of you that haven’t been following what may be the most significant story out of PAX, let me sum it up in two words:

“Swine Flu”.

Confirmed cases of H1N1 among attendees, with reports trickling in from around the country, are being tracked at Penny Arcade. From a PR standpoint, having to say Our event has spread disease to the four corners of the continent is never high on the “to do” list, but kudos to the PA folks for providing information on flights & trains taken by those known to have been afflicted. That they take the effort to do so while they themselves (along with fellow cartoonists) are afflicted is laudable.

Maybe they’ll rename it “Gamer Flu”. Maybe Jack Thompson will take it as a sign of heavenly retribution on degenerate murder-simulator-loving sociopaths. Maybe there will be missing/late/guest strips across webcomicdom.

While “Patient Zero” is yet to be identified, please enjoy some pertinent information from the King County (Washington) Department of Public Health and some more from the CDC. Putting so many people together all weekend, perhaps contagion is inevitable but I can’t say it enough — cover your coughs and sneezes with your upper arm/shoulder and wash your damn hands.

And because — judging from every time I use a public restroom — nobody knows how to wash their damn hands, here’s the deal:

1. Turn the water on as hot as you can stand it
2. Wet your hands thoroughly
3. Get more soap than you think you need and lather up
4. Scrub aggressively — get between fingers, underneath the nails, and along the nail beds
5. Keep this going at least as long as it takes you to hum the alphabet song; alternately, you may use the chorus to Re Your Brains, the intro to Layla, or you may be a little teapot twice … just keep going for at least 20 – 25 seconds (and longer is better, assuming you don’t get into OCD territory)
6. Rinse thoroughly with hot water
7. Dry

Next one of you bozos I catch turning on the water, waving your fingertips near the stream, then leaving? We’re going to have words.¹

• You know who probably knows how to wash his hands so they know they’ve been washed? Harvey Pekar. I had a really awesome talk with that guy once about jazz that left no doubt in my mind that no man can stand against him when he is resolute in his opinion, much less mere germs. Marshall Willenholly has an interview with Harvey about his new webcomics project over at MTV Splash Page.

_______________
¹ The words will be on what remains of the label on a broken beer bottle.

Gah — why do long weekends just make Tuesday seem like Monday squared? Fortunately, there are things that make the day worthwhile.

• Jumped the gun a little on yesterday’s celebration of Octopus Pie‘s return, since it didn’t go live until the evening hours my time. No matter — two Chuck Jones references (how I love thee, The Dover Boys), a “bicycling” fat kid that I swear I’ve seen in my neighborhood, some of Meredith Gran’s best facial expressions ever (in that second page, I’m not sure if Eve on the bench is nervous, or disgusted by what she might be sitting in), and one or two complaints in the comment box about why don’t you give me my free entertainment when I want it why why why. Any one of those is worth the price of admission by itself.
• And hey — after not sleeping for about four – five days, also a new Dresden Codak from Gran’s studiomate, Aaron Diaz. About, appropriately enough, sleepwalking. And the danger of non-secured laptops.
• Anybody catch Tom Siddell‘s stream the other night? Count the webcomics references if you dare — first person to identify all characters gets a no-prize.
• Big things coming out of Transmission-X tomorrow: Butternut Squash returns from hiatus and joins up on the T-X page, Aardehn shifts from Mondays to Wednesdays, and Eric Kim‘s Streta joins the collective.
• Finally, a piece of prose, without so much as an illustration, that I wish to commend to your attention; for some time, I have held the opinion that when he’s hitting on all cylinders, Jerry Holkins may be the most evocative writer alive. Oftentimes, this gift for wordplay is given in service to frivolous, if hilarious, things. But given the opportunity to write about something close to his heart, Holkins brandishes words with the precision of surgical instruments:
  

  I have always felt that I was too conservative in naming your brother, in naming him comfortably, in giving him a name without sufficient destiny. I determined that this would not be your fate, Ronia. You also have a Q, in Quinn, so that when you are forced to append some meaningless form or other with your middle initial, you will deposit a Q thereupon – unleashing it, very nearly unsheathing it, young lady, to dazzle thine enemies.

  I need you to be thus armed because I fear your mother and I have played a trick on you; we have brought you to a place where hidden weaponry is sometimes necessary. In our defense, and I recognize that it may be insufficient, this was the only world available to us.

  Fleen congratulates Brenna and Jerry Holkins on the birth of their daughter, and Elliot Holkins on his new baby sister; learn what they have to teach you, Ronia, and know that they love you.

Priorities:

1. Leisurely breakfast — check
2. Take dog to dog park for runnings and butt-sniffings — check
3. Clean shoes thoroughly — check
4. Not write anything for the webcomics blog because most of webcomics is taking off today with the exception of Meredith Gran dropping 11 pages on us — dang
5. Celebrate the achievements of the organized labor movement and the benefits derived from it Drink beer — in progress

Happy Labo[u]r Day, kids.
(more…)

Perhaps because of a WordPress upgrade, all of Fleen’s Project Wonderful slots are open. Please, feel free.

Long weekend? Finishing up early? Not bloody likely. I had a bunch of stuff in the mailbag I wanted to talk about, and instead you get quick stuff from the top of my head. Next week will be better, I hope. At least, next week I hope to be past the point where I think that a tequila IV is a good idea.

• Enjoy PAX,those of you there (and those that aren’t, check out what’s happening on your mobile device).
• Bellen shifts schedule — expect black&white 3-panel strippery Monday through Thursday, and splashy color double-sizes on Fridays.
• Octopie megaupdate #1 due on Monday … 11 pages worth, from what I hear. Given that the last update was on Wednesday, August 12th, the most we would have seen in the meantime under the former 3/week schedule would have been … 11 pages. Hey, lookit that — exactly as much free entertainment, produced in a way that the artist is happier with, and likely leading to a more cohesive storyline. I think that’s what’s called a win-win-win-win. If you can’t remember between now and Monday, RSS-up and enjoy it when it hits.