Showtime is upon us; people heading to this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con will be the first to find out who wins the Harvey Awards (with nominees from various field of webcomickry including but not limited to Dustin Harbin, Kate Beaton, gala host Scott Kurtz¹, and everybody that’s ever touched The Gutters). In case that doesn’t leave you awarded out, the Ignatz Awards will be handed out a few weeks later at SPX, and The Spurge² has the list of nominees; a quick perusal shows Box Brown taking multiple nominations, but honestly [web]comics and [indy]comics are pretty indistinguishable these days, so pert-near everybody on the Ignatz list is one of our tribe. Well done, everybody.

Oh, and speaking of the con this weekend, Bal’mer is home base for Super Art Fight, which promises yet another dip into supreme weirdness, plus Anamanaguchi. If you can’t make it to the Harvey Awards ceremony, this is a perfectly cromulent alternative.

• So about five minutes ago my phone spontaneously rebooted — technology, right? Anyway, I’m going to convince myself that in the couple of minutes that it was power-cycling and re-acquiring a signal, Senator Joseph Lieberman’s office was trying their darndest to get in touch with me regarding the message I left yesterday. And naturally, because things are very busy for the senator’s press office, they didn’t have time to leave a voicemail when they were unable to get through to me.

  Otherwise, I’d have to report that they haven’t yet produced a comment regarding Chad Love-Lieberman’s reasonably blatant art thievery. To see some of the artwork that this stellar example of humanity was claiming as his own, make with the clicky, and if you can identify the actual creator of any of the uncredited art, let the editors of that site know, as they want to give proper credit.

• Hey, you know who we haven’t heard from in a while? Steve Troop. I wonder if he has anything going on these days?
  

  Steve Troop wrote:
  Hi Gary!

  I guess he does!

  I started updating Melonpool again as a weekly Sunday-style strip as I move toward filming the puppet movie. So far, I’ve had 13 updates since the relaunch on May 20. My plan is to keep it as a weekly until filming is completed and then bring it back as a daily once the film is in the final editing stages — to kind of ramp up to the debut.

  Steve’s not the only webcomicker to dip his toes into movie making, but he might have been the first; Melonpool the comic, Melonpool the excuse to play with puppets, and Melonpool the movie to combine all the other Melonpools have been competing for Troop’s attention for most of the past dozen years, and the long journey for at least one of them has some ultimate destination in sight. Take a peek at his originals for sale (at a discount!) and maybe buy a few seconds worth of videotape, won’t you?

• Speaking of buying, first book jitters are something every serious webcomics creator has to confront someday; this week it’s Julie Faulkner, who launched the first collection of her gym-and-trainers themed Promises, Promises earlier this week. Starting Tomorrow is actually available today, or you could hit up Faulkner for a copy at Fan Expo (next weekend) or Word on the Street (late September), both in Toronto.

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¹ Who has publicly asked for people to vote for Kate Beaton and not himself in the Best Online Comics Work category; if he were to actually win, I look forward to hearing about an epic rant, followed by Kurtz dropping the mic and leaving the stage.

² Welcome back, Tom. Heard you’ve had a fun summer.