Bigbooté.

• Because I work in New York, I was able to obtain a copy of this article on paper, and will forthwith be framing that sumbitch and keeping hard by Fleen’s Action News Desk. Clearly, I have approached all of my hack webcomics pseudojournalism completely wrong, and in future this bastion of reportage will be my model. I will no longer ask webcomickers about their work, their inspirations, or how they hope to inspire or interact with their readers. From now on, the emphasis is on how much they love the gossip¹.

  Readers of this page may recall that Dave Kellett (that would be the creator of Sheldon and Drive, not Dave Kellett, Osteopath) was invited back in October to give a talk at Ohio State University’s triennial Festival of Cartoon Art, and did so in response to a talk that Bill Watterson had given at the same conference 21 years earlier. It’s taken a while, but Kellett’s talk is now available on the Youtubes in five parts. The most important thing established: Kellett’s crush is Watterson, given that he returned repeatedly to a photo of Watterson at the drawing desk, turning the projector of the auditorium into his own public crush wall. Adorable!

  In other news, Scott C has produced visual documentation (and it is now mine, sitting on my desk in my home) of notroious partiers Mister Banzai and Mister New Jersey gossiping with and mutually crushing on a pair of Red Lectroids; clearly one is John Whorfin, but who could the other canoodler be? Not John Bigbooté, since he has no glasses. Our inside sources say it may be John O’Conner, John Gomez, John Yaya, John Littlejohn, or even — gasp — John Smallberries.

  Okay, I can’t actually keep up the tone any longer — it makes my brain hurt. It’s a bit difficult to put the info from the website, but I believe every member of Pizza Island is going to be a featured guest at the MoCCA Fest in four weeks, Dave Kellett’s talk was erudite and funny, and Scott C rules. That is all.

• It’s been a long, long time since we first laid eyes on Nate Simpson’s comics work; back then it was apparently (judging by file names) called Waldo then, and now it’s known as Nonplayer. The writing’s a bit tighter, the art as gorgeous as it ever was, and it’ll be hitting the comic shops next month. Check ‘er out.
• Got a tweet yesterday (from J Baird, of the Create a Comic Project), reproduced here in its entirety:
  

  @fleenguy Here’s a news item: Lulu has released its API. You can publish to your own site with them solely as a backend. It’s free! #luluapi

  It took a bit of digging from there, since the main Lulu site didn’t have mention of this that I could find, but here’s what I know so far (via the Lulu Developer Portal):

  The Lulu Publication API allows individuals and publishers to use the Lulu backend to publish print-on-demand and electronic books programatically. Upload and publish books in any format (paperback, hardcover, eBook), get free ISBNs (or assign your own), sell on Lulu.com, Apple’s iBookstore, and other leading retail channels.

  Interesting. There’s quite a lot of technical documentation, but as I don’t have a developer’s account (nor have need of one), I suspect that there are subtleties that I’m as yet unaware of. Fingers crossed that we get a good FAQ-style summary of the API’s features, but it looks like e-books can be done perhaps more simply than they were before this release. Not everybody wants to go to the trouble of producing their own in various formats, naturally, but right now I don’t have enough info to tell you more than interesting. Maybe very interesting?

• Speaking of interesting, may I refer you to a link? Why yes, I believe I may. Your guess is as good as mine, but 26 April at 10:00pm EDT is when I’m going to try very hard to be near a computer.

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¹ Jesus Tapdancing Christ.