Is this a first? I think it might be a first. Scott Kurtz needs to show a character’s comic strip work in-story, and he got KC Green to supply the art. Having a completely different artist (with a different aesthetic and different approach to humor) provide in-continuity work in this fashion is something with enormous potential and I’d love to see how other webcomics might use this approach.

• Speaking of Kurtz and Green, they’ll be guests of the Webcomics Rampage next weekend in Austin, with some of the luminaries of the medium doing the in-store meet/greet thing. Those of you in Texas, check it out. Those of you in Portland, Legends of Webcomics takes place at Dunning-Kruger Solutions (i.e.: Meredith & Aaron’s studio) this Saturday, with more luminaries. Finally, every remaining webcomics luminary will be at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco for Monsters of Webcomics: Webcomic-Con 2009 on Saturday the 12th. If your favorite creators aren’t at any of these, I guess they just aren’t luminous enough.
• Just over a day remains to buy yourself (or a loved one) a sort-of guest appearance in Schlock Mercenary; let’s let my evil twin tell the story:
  

  The upcoming “Mallcop Command” chapter will feature several human side-characters, all of whom need names. In the spirit of giving, we’ve decided to auction off the rights to put your name (or a friend’s name) on one of those characters. The proceeds of these auctions will benefit the Utah County Family Support and Treatment Center, which helps families in crisis and works to prevent abuse. The winner of each auction will supply the name, and Howard will decide how to apply it. This is a great gift for that hard-to-shop-for Schlock fan in your life.

  Please note that unlike corporations buying naming rights to things like the local sports stadium, there’s no guarantee that your namesake will be around for the long haul; Tayler reserves the right to kill off any/all of these background players in horrible and/or amusing ways. More details of what you get if you’re the winner at Tayler’s blog, and the auctions themselves are handily aggregated onto one page here. As of press time, the auctions have raised a hair over $375; it would be nice to hit a nice round number like $500.

• Yeah, can’t really work the “guest” theme into this one; Alice Hunt of Goodbye Chains needs some assistance to make a shared resource complete:
  

  As a service to our readers, we’ve been working on a little project for a while now: a comprehensive listing of historical webcomics. We’d like it to be exhaustive, but the Internet is vast and wide, and I’m sure there’s plenty we don’t have on the list. Could we enlist your help (and maybe the help of your readers) in fleshing it out?

  If you’re aware of comics that we missed, would you be so kind as to let us know?

  That would be webcomics with a theme/subject matter that’s historical in nature, not webcomics that are themselves history-making. You’ll get the idea, just take a peek at the list and let the GC crew know of any they should add.

Holy crap you guys, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened — T-Rex has decided to start stomping, and he’s stomping a half-dozen Admiral Ackbars. There’s no way that can turn out well. Guess you’ll need to find a home for him as far away from any Ackbars that might still be running for their lives.

• In other trap-related news, the 2010 Eisners have opened up their nominations, with the specifics in the PDF here. The category potentially of interest to readers of this blog is described as:
  

  he best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2009. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to us by clicking here.

  Why “trap-related”? Because this category has a history of changing the interpretation of “long-form original comics work” from year to year, just waiting to ensnare the unwary potential nominee. Strips appear to be out, but does the story have to be over and done with? Would on ongoing, serialized story with a clear beginning, middle, and end (although not completed in 2009) be eligible? ‘Cause there’s a bunch of those that represent some of the best of comics but I don’t think they’ll be considered (despite some of those being considerably similar in scope and long-formness to one of last year’s nominees).

  How long is “long-form”? What about a single storyline from an ongoing comic? Or something that actually requires a digital presentation? Venture into these waters carefully, but let’s see if we can’t get some consideration for some of our best work, yes?

• My God — it’s full of Rikers. You may be trapped here half the day soaking up the awesome.
• Aspiring cartooners still have more than a week to enter the guest-strip contest at Calamaties of Nature; the trap here is that you could end up with a comic running on a site that disrespects moustaches. Tread carefully before you make a deal with The Devil.
• Up for a little casual blasphemy? From (to the best of the knowledge, previously unrepresented in the world of webcomickry) Slovenia comes Paradise Misplaced, where each week God tries to get creation going and those pesky humans find a new way to not quite get it right. Produced by the not-at-all-pseudonymous Anonymous Gosh, it’s got a lot of R. Crumb influence, by way of The PBF perhaps. Readers, naturally, run the risk of offending the ineffable name and being trapped in dire punishments for all eternity. On the other hand: cartoon boobies. For extra fun, click on the link to render the site in Slovenian.
• Finally, there’s a free sketch on offer from Brian Carroll of Instant Classic; for two more days, Carroll will draw anything you want (within reason) as part of The Great Instant Classic Graphite Marathon 2009. If you take up Carroll on his generous offer, how about you kick him a little bit in the ol’ PayPal link to offset his materials and shipping costs? The trap, naturally, is that graphite smears if not handled carefully, and you could totally get black goo on your fingers.

Because a bunch of things just sort of happened all at once, many of them of the milestone variety. Viz:

• Little Gamers turns nine years old today.
• Today is the arithmetic mean of the day that Irregular Webcomic hit 2500 strips and the day that Misery Loves Sherman hits 500 strips (no link until tomorrow). Also, I’m about five days late on this one (but I like to do these round-numbers deals in big chunks when I can), but Tweep pretty much put itself outside of casual Archive Bingery last week when it crossed the 1000 mark.
• Today marks two years of Bill Barnes making Unshelved his entire job, and one day since Jeph Jacques sold enough t-shirts to buy a house.
• And if all these variations on damn that is a lot of webcomickry going on isn’t enough for you, you can slurp up two and a half hours more in this vidcast, starring Dylan Meconis, Bill Mudron, Katie Lane, and Erika Moen (who is totally awesome at both thinking up titles and spelling); it’s all about making comics and navigating the world of freelancing (that last part is especially important if you ever consider doing such work yourself).
• Finally, there’s a thinky piece by Eric Burns-White yesterday on why paywalls on the internet (whether it’s newspapers or comics or encyclopaediae) are doomed to failure. I will register my usual and token objection to one thought that crops up in the comments (and often does in these contexts): that very few internet ventures make money purely by providing content (with the unspoken assumption being that this is why old-time comics guys look down on webcomickers as t-shirt merchants).

  My objection being, I don’t care how many newspapers paid to carry Peanuts, that’s not what got Sparky his own private hockey rink; he got richer than God by licensing his characters to appear on everything from snack cakes to insurance companies. The ratio of direct revenue from the comic to revenue from merchandise (including the dreaded t-shirts) is probably not significantly different from that seen by the average self-sufficient webcomicker when comparing direct website revenue (say, advertising) to that brought in by the sales of tangible stuff.

  It’s not a critical point, but I have a great affection for it, so let me have this one thing, okay? It doesn’t detract from the logical basis of Mr Snark-White’s argument, and doesn’t lessen the strength of his conclusions.