Gary, people say to me sometimes, why haven’t you had kids? The world obviously needs your genetic legacy to be continued, you wonderful man, you.

Because, I reply demurely, I get to not sleep on a regular basis by taking ambulance calls in the middle of the night, and while children will grow out of it, the slightly ill (who will end up in waiting room chairs, whether I wheel ’em in on a stretcher or not) will always be there for me. I don’t have to put them through college, but neither will they take care of me when I’m old and decrepit. I am today questioning whether I made the right life choice. Let’s knock down some news items while I’m still conscious.

• New NEWW guests announced; time for me to make some hotel reservations, I’m thinking.
• As mentioned last week, Hello With Cheese loses artist Bryan Prindiville with strip #250, and today Darren J. Gendron announces the new arteest:
  

  Hailing from the coffee-scented land known as Colombia, Obsidian, or “O” has been working as a comic artist since 2003. He started his own webcomic Commissioned in 2004, which already has over 1,400 pages online.

  Dern and Obsidian met last year at ConnectiCon, which was only O’s second trip to a convention in the USA ever. But because of an invite doled out by Rosscott, O was tempted by the terror of on-panel battle known as Super Art Fight.
  When putting together a short list of artists capable of replacing Prindiville, a brainstorm was held. Essentially, we had to define what worked so well about him as an artist. First, Hello With Cheese was not his first webcomic. He’d already developed his own style long before drawing Tom Selleck was a job description. Second, there was a speed element to it, something that makes Prindiville a formidable heel in Super Art Fight. And third, there has to be a similar sense of humor.

  This mythical short list of artists that dern put together started first and foremost with Super Art Fighters. They’re the best at getting it done fast and funny. But because of O’s extensive history and consistent style and feel on Commissioned, he was the No. 1 Draft Pick Dream.

  And then, he actually said yes.

  Welcome, Obsidian, and speaking of SAF, we’ll note that it’s just turned two years old. Expect bratty behavior and incessant repetition of “Why?” for the next couple of years.

• Nina Paley has been mentioned on this page before, most notably for the free-distribution model she adopted for Sita Sings The Blues. Her experiences with copyright (and copyleft) have prompted her to go back and re-release all of her earlier work under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license, and she’ll be talking about this (and other issues of independent art production & intellectual property) with our friends from the Cartoon Art Museum:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum is honored to host Before Sita Sang The Blues: Spotlight on Nina Paley, the first comprehensive exhibition of award-winning cartoonist and animator Nina Paley, creator of the critically acclaimed animated feature Sita Sings The Blues. This retrospective will feature a selection of Paley’s syndicated comic strips, illustrations, and a series of prints, paintings and behind-the-scenes materials from Sita.

  The exhibition will run from 3 July to 24 October at CAM in San Francisco, with a screening of SSTB on 20 July. Those of you making your way to San Diego down the left coast, this might be a cool place to stop over on the way.