Things happening in anticipation of MoCCA, so let’s dip into the mailbag, shall we?

• Following up on the news of the Shuster Award nominations a few weeks back, one of the nominees dropped a note to say hi. Attila Adorjany was the only Webcomics/Bandes Dessinées Web nominee whose work I wasn’t familiar with, and his email prompted me to fix that. Whew — Metaphysical Neuroma is a mindbender; for once, having a website that’s a bit slow to load is an advantage, since it gives you more time to absorb everything. Weirdly enough, the tone reminds me of Elan’ Rodger Trinidad’s God™¹, but with a completely different direction to the story and wholly different art. Like I said, weird.
• Speaking of new works reminding me of older works — both in artwork and (to a degree) subject matter, the brand new The Broken Light by Sabin Calvert is Meconisesque … it’s set in a particular historical context (the times in and around the [American] Civil War), and it’s got a half-engraving, half-woodcut feel to the visuals. Only four pages so far, but I’m intrigued.
• Various work show-debuting at the 69th Regiment Armory in three days, including Sam Costello’s Split Lip Volume 2, David McGuire’s 12 Labors of Gastrophobia, Box Brown’s Everything Dies, and David Malki !’s third Wondermark collection will make its first East Coast appearance. Maybe I can even pick up my long pre-ordered copy of the Tigerbuttah Golden-style Book and (if the printer gets its shit together) Templar 4? Maybe!

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¹ Or, more fully, God™ © 2XX8 *** ***** ****** ******* Incorporated. All rights reserved. God and all related characters, titles, names and documents are trademarks of *** ***** ****** ******* 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.

Today was the last installment of Little Dee; we’ve known this day was coming for months, but it still caught me by surprise. Ted, Blake, and Vachel were together for who knows how long before Dee came along nearly six years ago, but with Dee back home with her parents (we haven’t even seen her in the last 10 days), they’ve gone separate ways.

Vachel married Alida the elephant and Blake (gay-)married the stalker alligator; they’ve set up homes away from the cave. Ted, center of the strip, find himself alone in the cave and sets out for places and adventures unknown. Put the chairs up, turn out the lights, and take care. Oh, and be sure to check out Baldwin’s Spacetrawler, where stuff like this happens all the time; I think Vachel would fit right in.

• O-kay! Let’s lighten up the mood a little, shall we? A couple of books that we’ve spoken of previously have news worth considering. Mercury, by Hope Larson, hits the street today, and Nothing Better vol 2 made it into Previews, which means it’s orderable by your favorite local comics shop. Give ’em some love.
• Of the webcomickers I met in the past year, I think that Angela Melick is the one I feel the most … kinship? … with. Her sense of humor skews about the same way mine does, and she wears the ring, making us part of the same tribe (and she carries our banner proudly, sharing our culture with the world).

  And like all engineers, Melick knows that when something ain’t broke, sometimes the best thing you can do is break it, and put it back together different (and possibly better); thus, new website design. Please leave your bookmarks exactly as they are, since the address is the same.

• And the word is: moustache!

Okay, it’s not BOAT!, but what is? There are some book pre-orders that you might want to take note of.

• Little Dee is about to end (and you really must excuse me, as I appear to have somthing in my eye), and that means that the last Little Dee collection will shortly make it to press. Pre-orders on Little Dee Volume 4 are up, at the bargain price of $15 (+ $5 S/H to North America, $15 to the rest of the world), complete with Chris Baldwin’s autograph.
• Erika Moen recently concluded DAR (but then stepping up to do a Penny Arcade guest strip, which wanged her site), which means it’s time for the last print collection of that hybrid of the personal and the public. DAR! A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary Volume Two (complete with tentacles!) contains the very earliest and very last strips from the webcomic, and is up for your pre-ordering pleasure for $15, or $20 with customization (plus the ubiquitous shipping and handling).
• Last year at this time, Dylan Meconis was putting together the Bite Me! print collection; this year, it’s the first book of the companion story, Family Man. Chapters one and two are up for pre-order in a variety of packages, from book only, to book + additional swag, to book + swag + original artwork, to all of the above + a hand-tooled leather-bound copy of the book, all Bible-style. Prices start at $20 and go up from there (plus, yet again, shipping and/or handling).
• No pre-order yet, but Scott C grabbed my interest this morning:
  

  I’m working on a zombie kids book. I forget if I mentioned it.

  I am so there, with or without a kid. Actually, screw the kids, they can’t have my copy.

• Book-oriented, at the very least: the Hugo Awards recognize the very best in speculative fictions, and they continue to give respect to the webcomics community. Nominated for stories not yet collected in book form, both Girl Genius (Phil & Kaja Foglio) and Schlock Mercenary (Howard Tayler) have been honored in the category of Best Graphic Story (against some guys named “Gaiman” and “Willingham” … never heard of ’em).

  Given that the awards will be made at the World Science Fiction Convention (which this year will be in Melbourne), I expect that webcomics fans Down Under may have a rare chance to meet some creators on their home turf. Do you love Girl Genius and/or Schlock Mercenary? Drop a line to the appropriate person and let ’em know that since they’ll be on the right continent and all, a signing appearance would be awesome.

The train was mostly empty and the sidewalks are pretty sparsely populated — hooray for people takin’ the day to celebrate a holiday. On the other hand, the internets are a bit emptier than usual as well, so we’ll have to content ourselves with a relatively sedate posting. I trust that all of you are outside enjoying the nice weather right now and wouldn’t notice a short update anyway.

• After yesterday’s Nedroidariffic episode of Dinosaur Comics (now reverted to its normal state), Ryan North (who bestrides webcomics like unto a colossus) has gifted us with the ability to bring back Reginald & Beartato. Behold: &butiwouldratherbereading=. By applying characters to a mask (look closely for the white parts … that’s where art can be added) and overlaying it on any comic in his archive, North can provide us with a near-inifite variety of different characters. Would you rather be reading Nedroid? Achewood? Wigu? Gotcha covered, Bunky. My favorite involves monologues from T-Rexkcd, particularly when discussing nerdery at which I have expertise. As an added bonus, the Unixkcd interface from yesterday now has a permanent home.
• In other news, we at Fleen undoubtedly missed plenty of April Foolery (including the silent-in-the-Owly-sense update to Unshelved), and completely neglected to take proper notice of the conclusion of the first Bad Machinëry story arc. The rivalry in mystery solving between Boys and Girls takes on a touching aspect as Shauna and Jack appear to be far less en-rivalled than previously known. That look on Shauna’s face in the last panel, the effort that Jack has to go to in order to compliment her … John Allison has perfectly captured that moment when flirting first starts to vaguely seem like a good idea, but you’re not quite sure why. The next week of downtime prior to the start of the next story will be too long.
• David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®™©^etc is justly famous for his quiet, patient way with supplementary material over at Irregular Webcomic, and never have I seen so much as an angry word from his hand. Yet today he is a seething cauldron of primal rage/deathlust, but it’s directed at those responsible for Monopoly, so that’s all right. If you want to read a very good explanation for why you’ve always hated playing that friggin’ “game”, click away (and make sure you have the annotations turned on).
• Upcoming: Wondercon is kicking off pretty much as we speak, MoCCA hits next weekend (curiously, no mention of press access ever showed up on their website, which was late to update … guess I’ll pay the $15), and the New York iteration of Drink & Draw Like A Lady hits next Friday evening in Chelsea. And best of all, it’s official: Webcomics Weekend (the famous original, accept-no-substitutes fun times) has announced for November 6 & 7. Details on the last forthcoming, and I’ll see you at at least two of those.

It’s kinda quiet today; webcomics are normally full of dudes and ladies with opinions and words and everything, and today — quiet. In the wilds of Colorado, Boxhead breaks out the semaphore flags. In a San Francisco toy store, a pantomime takes place, exeunt lovers. In Anytown USA (although one that tends not to get snow — draw your own conclusions), taxes provoke silent desperation and release for one family, while workplace frustrations drive a man to the only place he can have peace and quiet (although it’s been pretty quiet for him all week).

Ninjas always strike silently (whether in the Great White North, or plummeting over Western Maryland), so I’m not sure that counts, but the noisiest two dudes geeking out over a unicorn in silence? That’s definitely weird (although they appear to have made up for it some 65,000,000 years in the past). A bit more recently (at least in geological terms), a man quietly plumbs the depths of filthy desires, and Jeph Jacques provides an unusually quiet episode of Magical Love Gentlemen — usually, it’s pretty shouty until all de plookin’ ‘n thrashin’ be done wif.

On the far end of the spectrum, Jess Fink’s Chester 5000 XYV has gotten loud, gender-swapped, and marginally less SFW than it normally is, but hey — eight page update. Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz has found that existentialist films can be made more quickly than the insanely detailed comics he normally does. Meanwhile, messers McGuire, Green, and Lesnick have joined forces to create comics that can never be read on an iPad even as xkcd goes old-school … hint: “xyzzy” does nothing.

April Foolery has a long history in webomics, but even today there’s some legit stuff happening:

• DJ Coffman returns to daily stripping
• Steve Troop maintains a perfect once/year update schedule at Zero Worship
• K-9 Lives has a new short up at Vimeo
• The Ego And The Squid just hit update #1003 (more significant than 1000, because squid)