Is The Untouchables the right visual reference, do you think? Might it be better to go with The Right Stuff? In any event, Messers Green, Hussie, Rowland, Jacques, and Stevens look like a band, and the article that the photo is attached to is better than average¹ for a newspaper story on webcomics. Nice job on the title of the piece — The New Webcomic Entrepreneurs — as that’s really the important thing about our community.

It’s not the fact that comics end up on the web, it’s that the people that put them up are in charge of the business aspects of what they do (or, as Randy Milholland mentioned in an unrelated tweet yesterday, I am a small business). The only thing I noticed that was kinda weird — the author of the article talked to five creators and mentioned two others by name, but none of them were ladies? Like I said — weird.²

• Speaking of entrepreneurship, got an email from Darren “Dern” Gendron, regarding a Kickstarting of a product niche I can’t say I’ve noticed before in webcomickry: board games. Sure, there’s some card games out there (most recently with respect to the Axe Cop³ supplement to Munchkin), but I don’t recall any board games. Scury Dogs: Pirates and Privateers looks to fill that gap, assuming that the rather more complex production issues of a board game (compared to a card game) can be overcome with the rather larger necessary budget.

  As of this writing, about $3600 of the necessary 20 grand have been raised, with just over a month to go. If you like boardgames but find that you’re getting bored with Catan⁴, take a look at the gameplay description that Gendron has at the Kickstarter page and maybe kick in some booty fer the cause.

• Newly noticed: The Chairs’ Hiatus by Matthew Bogart; it’s the story of a band, or what used to be a band. It kind of fell apart, and the members drifted away and have been living in various states of quietude and isolation. Now they’re meeting again face to face and remembering what they had, what they missed, why they got so angry, and what could possibly be forgiven. It updates somewhat irregularly, a half-dozen or so screensworth at a time, in tall, continuous-reading chapters (30 or more screens to the chapter, we’re a good way through the third chapter now).

  There’s not the “punch” you get on every page, but since multiple pages go up in each update, and the story is explicitly designed to be read in longform, that’s not really a shortcoming. The art is nicely composed, and the faces are simple enough to make reader identification with the characters extremely simple. I like this one, and I’ll be checking it irregularly, because I want to read big chunks of story, just like it was meant to be read.

• Did I mention that Digger volume 6 was available for purchase? Because it totally is, and given that the strip wrapped back in March, this is the last time I’ll get to tell you “New Digger volume available in exchange for money, you guys!” More to the point, two waves of signed copies will be put up for sale on 6 August, half of them at 6:00am and half at 6:00pm (GMT-5). Since none of my Digger copies is signed I’m not going to fight you for one; someday though, I will be in the same place as Ursula Vernon, and all six of my books will be there, and I will get signatures and or sketches, yes! Yes, I will!⁵

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¹ Although the dismissive parenthetical that “the name says it all” in reference to MS Paint Adventures? Very, very lazy.

² One possible explanation — all of the creators in the article live in Massachusetts except Randy Milholland, and he has a history of having lived there, so maybe that’s it?

³ Speaking of Axe Cop, let this serve as a reminder that tomorrow Axe Cop co-creator (elder half) Ethan Nicolle launches his second webcomic, BEARMAGEDDON. Not sure entirely what it’s about (bears, I’m guessing), but I have a feeling that somebody should alert Stephen Colbert.

⁴ Oh god that pun was completely unintentional, I’m so sorry. It’s all Brad Guigar’s fault.

⁵ For added effect, read that last bit in the voice of the deranged and highly-amusing Marlon Fraggle.