Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

Another day, another announcement of a comic strip talent search/contest with dubious benefit to creators. Between the time I was requested to take a look at the terms & conditions, and this morning, Webcomics Dot Com had beat me to the punch — you need to subscribe, but the Bradster has the rules readthrough all done. Conclusion: not a good deal, since if you win you get to do a free comic strip for a month and sign over all the rights. Yay?

Basically, it’s the Amazon superstar contest all over again, and the only thing that’s come out of that particular project is I have a fun bet with Gordon McAlpin (the Gordonest of all possible Gordons). Oh, and Buni, one of the Amazon finalists, launched as a webcomic (although it’s dropped in frequency from daily to twice weekly to weekly, it’s still better than most of what’s on the comics page — ironically, creator Ryan Pagelow is running a second webcomic about a newspaper desperately trying not to die). So, I’m guessing at the conclusion of the WaPo contest, I will again be the individual that benefits most from the contest, in that I won’t be busting my ass for the privilege of “exposure”. To quote the very sexy R Stevens, People die of exposure.

By contrast, there’s a contest going on that you can enter, knowing that you won’t be giving up any rights or producing any free IP for a large corporation, and you might win a one-of-a-kind t-shirt: Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell Fan Contest, details at the link. Woo.
New (to me, and maybe to you) webcomic time, with a hell of a great hook: Space-Time Condominium is the story of a guy (sorta — hold that thought) named Griffin that gets picked to live in a rent-free house with four other versions of himself from alternate universes. Now, if that weren’t enough to inspire some big-time laugh-chuckles (Griffin the Cow gets made into burgers by his housemates! Zombie Griffin tries to kill the others! Griffine, the female Griffin, is the object of lust for all the non-gay Griffins in the house), there’s a kicker that makes it extra-awesome:
It’s not really a webcomic. It’s a long-forgotten Canadian sitcom, and each update is an episode complete with audience reaction. Check out the Reruns link; one update per week for about 18 months means you can knock down the whole season in a casual binge.
Finally, your moment of culture. Mike Russell went to the Portland Opera to see The Barber of Seville, and he’s posted the results of his live-sketched comic interpretation. All together now: Ohhhh, wait’ll I get my hands on that waaaaa-bit! Whaaaaat would you want with a raaaaa-bit?

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nina Lords. Nina Lords said: Another day, another announcement of a comic strip talent search/contest with dubious benefit to creators. Between… http://bit.ly/axRv4m […]

Caaaan’t you see that I’m much sweeter?
Iiiiiiii’m your lit-tle señorita..

Man, Carl Stalling’s WB scores are all that got me through my required music lit courses in college.

Thanks for the shout out! The legal over at the WaPo contest is apparently looking into fixing things, via @comicriffs, their Twitter presence. Siccing the dogs on them seems to have at least made them take some sort of action, though we’ll see how much by the end of things.

Thanks so much for the kind words about my webcomic, Space-Time Condo! I’m doing my best to jump the shark every week, and I’m glad you like it.

Thanks again,

Dave

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