For why not, see here and here. While Phillip has done his usual magic and got things back, I now lack the time to do more than point you at Intervention (launching today) and the Webcomics Longevity/Frequency chart.

My only comment here is that it seems to take the “frequency” part a bit loosely, as lengthy hiatuses and interruptions seem not to have dislodged comics like Achewood and Megatokyo from their original frequencies (approximately five and three days a week, neither of which does so now), nor credited those comics that have upped their frequencies (Girls With Slingshots, say).

It does, however, show how useless averages are, as occasional behemoths (50+ panels in a Diesel Sweeties, say, or a thousands-of-panels Dr Mcninja page really have very little effect on the overall averages. I will pay a dollar to anybody that adds in standard deviation and variances to this chart, and another dollar for skew and kurtosis¹.

PS: Phillip, thanks the back end works now but it’s still wonky about displaying the editing page and Dashboard. Welp, gotta run!

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¹ Any day I get to use the word kurtosis is a good day.

Gaaahhhh. Busy.

• J Grant, one half of the creator pair behind Two Lumps, has written a story that nobody wanted to publish so he’s all Screw it, up on the web and pay what you like [PDF]. I’ve liked very much the things that Grant has written and I have read; perhaps this will occupy me on the long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow.
• Brad, Dave, and Kris, in addition to being three quarters of the hottest boy band ever the Halfpixel webcomicking posse, used to do a reasonably regular podcast. Busy schedules (seriously Guigar was away on vacation for like 75% of the summer, I thought he’d been elected to Congress), a head cold (Scott Kurtz), and frustrating audio woes tried their best to delay any new releases of Webcomics Weekly, but have failed. Maybe I’ll be able to listen to this one [MP3] on the long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow.
• Oh man does this look pretty. It won’t be out in time for my long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow, but oh well — I would wait any amount of time for The Anime Club.

Okay, about 30 seconds until have to go sit in meetings all day. Perhaps for breakfast I’ll have some delicious, nutrifying bacon. Or is that horrifying? I always mix those two up.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say “Seminars, Bloody Seminars”, or “Presentations, Bloody Presentations”¹, but those wouldn’t let me invoke John Cleese, now would they? So busy today.

• Per the comments, Box Brown pointed out correctly that he was not the only repeat winner in this year’s Ignatz Awards — Joe Lambert won for both Outstanding Anthology or Collection and Outstanding Artist. Fleen regrets the oversight.
• Stripped keeps doing notable things, and there’s still a week left in the Kickstarter campaign (as of this writing: 140% funded). Today it’s an open call for creative types to participate:
  

  We’re extending a worldwide “open call” to independent, freelance, or small-team animators, to produce very short segments for the feature-length documentary, STRIPPED.

  Over 50 animators have already submitted samples, before we even asked for work. …It kinda blew us away, frankly! But we’d like to formalize that process, to better review everyone’s work, and compare apples to apples.

  There’s instructions how to submit on the Kickstarter page, with submission requirement #3 being particularly interesting:

  Your requested rate for 10-, 30-, or 45-seconds of animation

  Wait, rate? Let’s check the FAQ:

  Q: Is this a paid job?
  A: Yes.

  Well, that’s pretty unambiguously (especially considering how much, much larger and funded entities keep trying to get creative types to work for free exposure), and ties in nicely with Meredith Gran’s rule for promoting the careers of women²:

  Pay them. No, seriously. Pay them with money.

  The movie just got a whole bunch more interesting (and it looks like this development was driven by creators wanting to participate, sending in their offers to work before there was a call for them), as I don’t think this direction was part of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder’s original plan. Can’t wait to see what the animators of the world come up with.

Okay. Time for eight hours of presentations with no cell coverage in the basement level of a casino meeting facility. Joy.

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¹ Sadly, no chance of “Symposia, Bloody Symposia”, given that the original definition of “symposium” was “drinking party”.

² Equally applicable to any under-represented group — especially those just starting out in their fields.

• I’m pretty sure that if Erika Moen could have done a For Better or For Worse blinky effect without it being completely creepy, Gyp would be totally winking at us in that last panel as the fourth wall is irretrievably shattered and we are cued for input. Speaking of which, I think I saw Bucko outside SUPER BAIL in Vegas. Dude does not want to go back to jail.
• Had I mentioned that Dean Trippe’s Butterfly is back? I don’t think I did. So, um, Dean Trippe’s Butterfly is back, and a much-missed all-ages webcomic is once again in my regular rotation¹. Also let it be noted that he has mastered the Beaton Posture.
• Not quite three months ago, the good folks at :01 Books were kind enough to send me a review copy of Feynman by Ottaviani and Myrick. The book released to the wider world about three weeks ago, and next Sunday’s New York Times bestseller list for hardcover graphic novels shows Feynman in the top slot².

  In my review of Feynman I talked at length about the man, what he meant to me, and how good the content between the covers was, but I neglected — shamefully! — to note that Collen AF Venable did her usual stellar job of book and cover design. I believe that the pull quote on the cover³ was particularly her choice, and he deserves praise just for that element alone. The cover is bold, eye-catching, and tells you everything you need to know because let’s face it — we totally judge books by their covers.

  I’m entirely convinced that while people like me who seek out :01’s offerings would always recognize their uniformly excellent quality, the cover design is a huge part of what convinces the reading public to buy the damn things. Feynman might have been the first #1 bestseller Venable contributed to, but it won’t be her last. Speaking of which I believe the fourth book in her Guinea PI series is available and you should buy it because it’s super cute⁴.

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¹ On occasion, I find myself wistfully wondering if Lunchbox Funnies will ever make a full comeback — most of the creators are on to other projects, but dang it was a nice hub for getting your all-ages fix.

² A somewhat narrow category to be sure, but as of this writing, it’s presently #839 overall at Amazon, #6 among all comics and graphic novels, and #1 in Physics. Also, #1 in biographies specifically of Feynman, which is a ridiculously narrow category.

³ If that’s the world’s smartest man, God help us, credited to Feynman’s mom.

⁴ I believe the technical term is “totes adorbs”.

Alternate title: It’s a Box, Box, Box, Box World.

So Dustin Harbin hosted the Ignatz Awards were held over the weekend at SPX, and the signature bricks went to a variety of talented creators, with a healthy showing by webcomickers.

As widely expected, Kate Beaton continued her metaphorical march to the sea of cartooning, burning and pillaging all in her wake, and taking the brick for Outstanding Online Comic. I’ma go out on a limb and say they should just set one aside for next year’s awards for the best collection or reprint or whatever the most appropriate category might be¹ for her new collection from D&Q. The darn thing sold out almost immediately and I have a first-hand account that Beaton’s signing line was “redonkulous”.

The Ignatz for Promising New Talent (which award in the past has gone to people as distinguished as Carla Speed McNeil, Nick Bertozzi, Derek Kirk Kim, Andy Runton, Hope Larson, and Sarah Glidden) went to Darryl Ayo [Brathwaite] (sometimes he uses the surname, sometimes not), who I had the pleasure of talking with last year at … was it NEWW? I think it was NEWW. Focused, clever young man, lot of future success to be had. I think there’s a lot of interest in his comics work today, as one of his sites is down, presumably from over clicking.

Meanwhile, Box Brown was the night’s only repeat winner, taking two bricks for Outstanding Mini Comic (Ben Died of a Train) and Outstanding Series (Everything Dies). Brown’s quickly become webcomics’ most prominent explorer of eschatological topics, and it’s nice to see him recognized for both a personal reflection of a death and the polar extreme of trying to examine beliefs of what happens to all of us in death.

And keeping on the Box Brown theme for just a moment longer, his Retrofit Comics imprint has released its first monthly comic, James Kochalka’s Fungus, which got a writeup at the AV Club today. Box Brown’s on a roll, and all you can do is get out of the way, or grab hold and hang on for dear life.

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¹ Also a Harvey, an Eisner, a Shuster, and every other comics award.

I’m headed to one of my not-favorite places on earth, Las Vagrus, Nevadruh¹, a place I can generally tolerate for about 72 hours. I’ll be there from tomorrow through next Friday. Anyway, between an extensive work schedule and time zones, expect postings to go up late. I know, you’re strong and will muddle through somehow. With any luck, I can use the plane ride to get enough re-reads of Amulet 4 in that I’ll be able to do a proper review. Short version: Wow.

• Submitted without comment, via Bernie Hou‘s twitterfeed:
  

  Of all the–…? My If You See Something, Say Something print on @topatoco got cease & desisted by the MTA

  Sorry for all the millions I was costing you, MTA! Now that I’ve taken it down, you can lower your fares right

  Okay, one comment: the now-evaporated print was done from this comic, re-done with the assistance of the lovely Carly Monardo as the foreground model, and fortunately can never be seen by anybody ever again.

• Anniversary Desk: The Exclamationverse! (which presently consists of four separate, linked strips, plus one reimagining) hit 14 years old yesterday, based on a premiere date of 8 September 1997 for Roomies! And based on a 9 September 2001 launch, Wapsi Square turns ten years old today. Put Paul Taylor and David Willis together and you have webcomics experience that’s been old enough to drink for three years already. Well done, guys.
• This looks intriguing. Shaenon Garrity² is going to do a presentation on Kickstarter at the Alternative Press Expo the first weekend of October in San Francisco. I’ll be at my niece’s wedding in New York, so I’m going to have to miss out on what promises to be a wealth of good information, particularly considering that Garrity may still hold the record for pledge amount/contributor ratio (at the time of that posting, about US$92 per pledger; final ratio just over US$76 each). If you’ve used Kickstarter to good effect, she’d like to hear from you — drop her a message via the tweets machine.

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¹ Partially due to my severe allergies to excessive neon and arbitrary noise, partially because it was never better described than when Frank called it de hypocritical Jeezis-jerknuh parodise.

² Radness Queen of the East Bay and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, North American Cordillera division.

Does mail still come in bags? I keep hearing that the Postal Service here in the US is on the verge of nonexistence, so maybe soon there won’t be any mailbags except in the metaphorical sense.

• Following up on yesterday’s mention of convention codes of conduct, Fleen Publisher and Impressario-General Phillip Karlsson¹ emailed me to point out that this discussion is taking place in other communities. For those that want to see how the Perl coder community is discussing standards of conduct, make with the clicky.
• Also following up on yesterday’s mention of indy/webcomic-themed conventions in general, Rebecca Viola emailed me a bit ago to mention a newcomer to the con circuit:
  

  We thought you would be interested in hearing about our second annual comics show. Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) is back and has a fabulous new website with tons of information about panels and new comic debuts! The show will be held Saturday, Sept 24 and is open to all ages with free admission.

  You thought right, Rebecca, and given the short duration, all-ages orientation, and free admission, I’d say that MICE is helping fill a niche that’s really only served by TCAF at present. I’ve spoken with some people that were at the inaugural MICE last year and they all had good things to say about it; if you’re in the New England area and are looking for creators the likes of Christopher Baldwin, Alexander Danner, or various TopatoCosters (not to mention what looks like a bunch of up and comers — people that we’re all going to be talking about in a few years time), make your way to Cambridge on 24 September.

• Speaking of things timed around cons, Kel McDonald wrote to tell me about an undertaking launching just after SPX:
  

  Right after SPX, Spike, Diana, myself, Lin Visel, and a few others are running this Tumblr contest. It’s kinda like the Ironman Challenge but with a time limit.

  Kel was hoping that I’d get my ass in gear soon enough to help promote the SketchBet so that there’d be plenty of participants, but her email came in during my Irene-prompted downtime. No matter, as the contest is full up with participants, so we can sit back and watch the fun roll in starting 17 September. See you there.

• Not email, but too cool to keep to myself: readers of this page may recall that I loves me some A Girl And Her Fed³, and I particularly love the character of Mr Speedy, a genetically-modified, ultra-rightwing, chlamydia-infested, viciously sarcastic koala. In case I didn’t have enough dick jokes in my life, I will soon be able to have a plush Speedy to prompt my recollection of his choicest word-bombs. Warning: they’re salty.

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¹ For newcomers, Fleen is service² of Phillip’s company, Dumbrella Hosting (which also hosts a series of high-quality webcomics as well as Oh No Robot and Project Wonderful. He makes sure that everything on the site works, leaving me to be the vaguely entertaining blog-monkey, and the deal is that in return for churning out the word count, he buys my drinks anytime we’re in the same place. Given that he lives in Rhode Island and I live in New Jersey, and that my liver is not nearly as debased as his, this does not put an excessive crimp in his booze budget.

² Possibly even a public service ernouncemint.

³ Rumor has it that I may have written the foreword to the first AGAHF print collection, coming soon.

I’m not going to say that somebody literally snuck poo bugs into my food, but I’m not saying that they didn’t, either. It’s been that kind of day. Quickly, then:

• Not specifically webcomics, but worth your attention: Jessica Hische (creator of the justly-famed Should I Work For Free? flowchart) has a thought-provoking essay on pricing your work. It’s written from the standpoint of a designer, but you can easily translate most of what it says to any independent creator-driven environment.
• On the horizon: Webcomicscon, first weekend of October (I’ll be at my niece’s wedding), in Norwalk, CT. First thing I noticed on their homepage is something you don’t normally see on con sites: a Code of Conduct, which looks pretty good. But might I make a suggestion that some variation of Wheaton’s Law be included as a numbered item, and a declaration that creepy, stalkery, unwanted-touchy people are not to be tolerated? I’ve seen people with no sense of personal boundaries at enough cons that, sadly, such an explicit statement of what should be minimally decent human conduct is necessary.
• Speaking of cons, webcomics überfan Michael Kinyon pointed me (and thus I point you) towards DigiCon, the virtual convention for those that can’t travel to cons. Interesting idea, curious to see how it works out, although scheduling it against SPX was probably not the best date they could come up with.

… and he’s pointing and casually declaring, Comics. Why is it I can’t see this sort of thing happening in America? We suck¹.

• About three months back, Jorge Cham released an initial set of screening dates for his cinematical entertainment, and I noted a screening tentatively set for my backyard. Yesterday, a far more precise screening schedule dropped, and it’s … I think that extensive is not sufficiently broad to describe what it is. More than one hundred showings are listed, with as many as a half dozen on the same day in far corners of the world. I note that Cham himself will be doing live Qs and As at some twenty of the showings, often accompanied by members of cast or crew.

  I’m particularly interested in this one in particular, as it’s very close to my home and thus I’ll be able to buy Jorge a drink by means of congratulations. Hope to see some of you out there, and a special message to all grad students past and present: it’s okay to laugh until you cry, since the alternative most likely available to you is to merely cry until you climb a tower with a rifle. Nameless bystanders, drop a word of thanks to Cham for giving all those potential spree killers a safe outlet for their grad-study insanities.

• Speaking of movies, Dave Kellett announced a bonus set of video clips from Stripped yesterday, featuring Kate Beaton, Ryan North², Richard Thompson³, and Greg Evans. Backers also have access to an extra clip of the man who might have done more to define comic stripping in the past few decades than anybody else: Jim Davis.
• Speaking of strips, Striptease wrapped up today, Chris Daily having been cranking out comics for damn near 11 years and more than 1000 updates. Fun fact #1: Daily was the first webcomicker I ever met, way the hell back at the first MoCCA Fest, probably around the time of the Inker Search storyline. Fun fact #2: just about every other webcomic referenced in those strips is no longer around, but Daily continues; look for book collections in the near future, and for the resumption of Punch an’ Pie from hiatus, and whatever pops into his head because there’s no stoppin’ the guy.
• Received last evening at my twitterfeed, via Patrick Race of Alaska Robotics, a short missive of great import:
  

  @fleenguy It might take a second but I think when you realize what this means you’ll be pretty excited. http://verabee.com/letter/testing.gif

  You guys. You guys. Almost the very first thing I ever wrote on this site was an appreciation of Vera Brosgol‘s Return to Sender, a webcomic so good it retains a spot in my bookmarks even though it’s seen no updates since 2004 and only one brief bloggening in 2007 (plus one crossover via a Scary Go Round guest strip nearly lost in the aether). But damn me if that link doesn’t look like Often and Colette, with perhaps a bit more of the crazy eyes that Brosgol used to such good effect in Anya’s Ghost. YOU GUYS, I AM MAYBE ABOUT TO BE THE HAPPIEST COMICS READER IN HISTORY.

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¹ If you’re going to get het up about that declaration of suckitude, it’s not a general comment on the country as a whole or its relative value or righteousness, just on our tragic underuse of Post-It Notes to create Pedobear on the office wall.

² Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, Northern Division.

³ Not the musician with the extra-nimble fingers.

Hurricane cleanup done, work nearly caught up, end-of-summer slowdown easing away, let’s get back to this embloggenation, shall we?

• The final countdown to this year’s Small Press Expo is underway, with nearly everybody from web/indy comics that you can think of, and work has me going in very nearly the opposite direction. Have fun in Bethesda (and the following weekend for Intervention) for me; I’ll be picking up a case of neon poisoning in Las Vegas.
• With just about half of the pledge period past, Stripped is sitting about 125% of goal, meaning that what might be the most important “if we go over goal” is pretty much a certainty. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I never considered the costs of closed captioning, but Freddave Kellett-Schroeder didn’t; comics are uniquely appealing to the hard of hearing, and now they won’t be left out of what could become a definitive exploration of the medium. Also, somebody check me on this — has any previous project in the comics arena gathered as many supporters as Stripped? As of this writing, 1765 people have pledged actual cash money to the project, which strikes me as a significantly high number¹
• Dustin Harbin — well versed in comics of all sorts — has had his thinking cap on and congealed his thinks into Fifteen Thoughts on Digital Comics. These thoughts are aimed squarely at those that publish comics on paper and are now flirting with comics in the digital realm, and it’s worth reading for anybody that makes or loves comics, because the way that large producers answer Harbin’s concerns will determine the future — even the existence — of comics. My eye particularly lingered on thoughts number 10 and 11:
  

  10) It seems to me like a foregone conclusion that people are going to one day wake up and think “Hey, why are comics the most expensive media purchase I make each month?” Digital device culture is increasingly ubiquitous, and the idea that the comics industry can funnel its readership in a direction that’s somehow in the best interests of publishers, brick-and-mortar retailers, and digital distribution companies is … hard to swallow. This is driven home to me whenever the “day-and-date” question pops up. Essentially, “Should digital comics be available the same day as their (presumably better? more important?) print version?” Because that question has nothing to do with users, and everything to do with print publishers and comic book shops. Here’s why:

  11) Publishers have tricked themselves into thinking that digital comics –- THEIR digital comics –- are somehow competition for their own print comics. They’re the same comics! You made them, publishers! Surely any person on your staff under the age of 40 can see that hmmmm, maybe print is not the safest boat to float in, maybe digital is going to be big “one day”? Alter your business model and give room to both. Stop competing with yourself, and start competing with your competitors again.

  One might note that webcomics² deal with those concerns neatly. Furthermore, webcomics³ seems to have engaged in one behavior that crucially differences it from the big print enterprises — there’s an ongoing (sometimes low-level, but always acknowledged in the background) conversation to the effect of What next? What comes after the current form of webcomics? What will be the next method of distribution, the next business model, the way that I meet the challenges that haven’t popped up yet?

  The reticence of print comics publishers to have that conversation among themselves is similar to the response of the music and movie industries to non-physical forms of their products. DC and Marvel may not have thrown around lawsuits with ridiculous monetary damages claimed like the MPAA and RIAA, but they have spent a similar period of time denying the shift to digital and engaging in a reaction that essentially amounted to If we ignore it hard enough it will go away and when we deal with it, it will be from a perspective of trying to keep things as much the same as they’ve always been. Whether they make the mental (and business model) shifts necessary to keep up with technological changes will determine how much of their industry still exists in ten years.

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¹ Not to mention the thirteen backers that have pledged at the US$500, US$1000, and US$5000 (!) levels.

² That is, creator-owned, web distribution to start, print and otherwise tangible iterations to follow.

³ Passim.