So there’s going to be webcomics-centric event at a comics store in Austin, Texas next month — they’re even flying in out-of-state guest, which is pretty dang cool. One caveat: although it’s called “Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Weekend”, it’s not associated with the New England Webcomics Weekend (™, dontcha know) that took place last March in Easthampton, Massachusetts (and will again in Fall ’10).

It will probably be no easier to keep exclusive use of the term “Webcomic[s] Weekend” than it is to hold onto “Comic[-]Con” — not that this is a bad thing, webcomics getting more popular and having events occur around them. Just understand, the original (and still the best) put on by Meredith Gran and Rich Stevens (with so much help from so many others) and held at Eastworks, will be the show arranged by the creators for the fans.

• Speaking of weeekends, this past one I was lucky enough to spend some time at a cocktail brunch presided over by my favorite barmen, with drinks shaken by the incomparable Dale DeGroff, in honor of the release of Lush Life, a new book of art and stories from the best bars and bartenders of the world, written and illustrated by Jill DeGroff. I’m bringing this up because as my wife and I were getting our copy signed, we were told that there were more than enough stories to fill a second book … and a third, and maybe a fourth. They’ll come later (instead of Lush Life being thicker) because of the need to keep production costs down.

  Bam. Self-publishing. In our very brief interaction before, I’d liked Jill DeGroff, but now I really liked her — getting the material, doing the layout, raising the capital, and printing that sucker up for herself is something I’ve seen many webcomickers do, and it always impresses the hell out of me. DeGroff isn’t a webcomics artist, but as we’ve previously established, the difference between a webcomics artist and any independent comics artist (or, for that matter, any independent artist, period) is essentially nil.

  We got to talking art and comics and she asked me who I liked. The first three names that came to my mind were Gran, Engström, and Beaton, which prompted The King Of All Cosmos Cocktails to remark, “I’ve heard of Kate Beaton” and start scribbling her URL for future reference. (Hey, Kate — the greatest drinks mixer in the world is in all likelihood chuckling mightily as he peruses your archives right now.)

  Anyway, if you find yourself in a bar, and a well-dressed lady appears to be intently sketching you (as I saw she was doing to me), tarry a while and have a good story at the ready — you may find yourself in a future edition. And even if you don’t, pick up a copy of Lush Life, as there’s some damn gorgeous work in there.

• Speaking of Kate Beaton (as if I don’t enough already — but I’ll stop speaking of her when she stops doing such incredibly good work), Dirk Deppey managed to combine her with a reference to one of my other favorite topics on this page, Frank Zappa. I don’t think that I’ve ever quite managed to work those two into one item, but the piece at ¡Journalista! is even better than anything I could have come up with, for two reasons:
  1. It combines one of my favorite Beaton things (doing squats on the North Pole) and one of my favorite Zappa things (the concept of eyebrows); the only way this could have been better is if it involved dudes and swords
  2. Deppey included a succinct and insightful analysis as to why this particular strip is so well put together; seriously, read the strip and read what he has to say — it’s like he put into words all the things that were running around in my subconscious

  Read, enjoy, and when in doubt, do some squats.