Because honestly, I could not possible have a more jaundiced view of human nature than I did yesterday. But you know what makes things better? Seeing creators succeed on the merits of their work, such as I just happened to notice Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson’s twitterfeed make a cryptical announcement to big news today, and the Benign Kingdom imprint just happened to launch a Tumblr yesterday, and just now I checked their profile at Kickstarter and heck if it doesn’t look like they’ve announced their latest creator slate:

Emily Carroll
Gigi DG
Tyson Hesse
Phil McAndrew (who surely must be feeling better than he was yesterday)

I was all impressed with myself that I maybe noticed this before any announcement, but I see that the new Benign Kingdom twitter account made an announcement eleven minutes ago, but for the record I totally found this myself. Look for an announcement of the Winter Spring 2013 collection/Kickstart in the immediate future¹.

As long as we’re on a happy kick, Joe Decie did a rather pretty fifth anniversary comic yesterday, which makes me wonder why he hasn’t done a Recipe Comix submission for Saveur. I bet that the celebratory cake in question would make for a lovely contribution; if you’re reading this Joe, drop me a line via our contact link over there to the right and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

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¹ It’s there now, added since I wrote that sentence, and already at 17 backers and nearly US$1000. Seriously, I just became the fourth person to snag a hardcover, and the campaign’s been live a whole five minutes. Oh, and it’s apparently the one year anniversary of B9’s launch, so go wish them a happy birthday with a pledge or perhaps at their brand-new storefront, yes?

Sometimes you really have to wonder how we as a species have managed to get this far when it’s clear that we are all working at cross-purposes. Because I’m hopeful, I like to think that the average non-sociopath doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder exactly what kind of jerkass behavior would be most fun today. Because I’m a realist, I know that while true sociopaths are rare, there are an awful lot of close approximations out there who just don’t care to make the effort to look any further than the tip of their noses in determining who might be affected by the actions they take in their daily lives.

Case in point: it made the rounds on Twitter yesterday that Sophie Goldstein had some of her artwork appropriated by a linkfarm site¹ without permission. Happens all the time, sadly, and as of this writing the offenders have had a full 23 hours to respond to Goldstein and have seemingly not done so. But wait — it gets better.

About an hour after Goldstein tweeted, I was forwarded an email conversation between the offending site (I don’t even want to name them, despite the fact that their logo is right there in the screencap, so I’m just going to call them Useless Jerkasses, LLC) and another creator², where they were asking to partner up³:

Hey [creator’s first name],

My name is [redacted because I’m a nice guy] and I am an account executive for [UJLLC]. I was just browsing your site and I think that it will actually be perfect for our network given its content.

Our network has grown to become one of the largest on the internet an we can promote your site to get you more visibility. Our price is $.04 per click, would that be something you would be interested in?

—
[redacted]
Account Executive
[address]
New York, NY, 10005
Direct: (646) [redacted]
Mobile: (646) [redacted]

E-mail: [redacted]@[ujllc].com
www: http://www.[ujllc].com

[UJLLC] – News and Entertainment Portal
Monthly Reach: Over 17 Million Unique Visitors

This transmission may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, photocopying or distribution of these contents is unauthorized and prohibited. If you have received this in error, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies.

So, they have clearly got an understanding over at UJLLC, that creators have an interest in being associated with their creations that that interest is worth money; in Goldstein’s case, they simply don’t care. However, there is an outcome here that may reaffirm some of your faith in humanity, as Mr Account Guy at UJLLC received this reply:

Funny you should write. My friend Sophie was just pointing out that you are using her artwork (“come here”) illegally on this page: [link removed to not give them traffic] – how about you make this right and then we can talk.

That was 22 hours ago and they haven’t stopped being useless jerkasses (but what can you expect? It’s right there in the name); in some small way they’ve been told exactly what they are, and I’ll take that small slap as a first step towards a better world.

At least until Phil McAndrew tweeted three hours ago that another linkfarm had done essentially the same thing⁴, adding a stupid caption and omitting credit from one of his cartoons. If anybody gets approached by these entirely different jerkasses (or any one of the jerkass linkfarms out there), may I suggest that we all reply with a variation of the No, you’re a jerk email above?

It doesn’t even end there, as in the past 48 hours I’ve learned of the depressing extent to which two different creators (again, no names; again, prominent people) are getting jerked around not by content-appropriators, but by two different corporations that apparently believe the best way to deal with creators is to scream Dance for me, little monkey, dance!

I swear on whatever you find convincing, if you people elect me as benign dictator of the world, these production suits will be the first people up against the wall in a brief reign of terror that will be based on Golgafrincham Ark “B”.

Happily, not everything in webcomicdom involves creators getting jerked around. From various corners of the intertubes, we learned more today about Strip Search as Robert Khoo, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins sat down with Mashable. My two favorite quotes were from Krahulik, on the twelve contestants getting along:

We never had to call an ambulance to the house. And to me, that’s something we need to work on for season two.

… and from Holkins, on what was difficult about sitting in judgment of others:

[It] turns out that dashing people’s hopes is actually a very tough business if you are the sort of person that has hopes yourself. Like, I know exactly how they feel and what they’re up against, trying to lead a creative life. In one hand, I have the life that they want. In the other hand, I have a black sword. And it’s hard to have those two things.

And finally, BOOM! Studios⁵ made it known today that their latest licensed Cartoon Network tie-in comic to take talent from webcomics will be Regular Show, to be written by KC Green and drawn by Allison Strejlau. Disclaimer: I don’t watch Regular Show (not out of sense of dislike, I’ve just never seen it), but it’s my understanding that it’s built around exactly the sort of anarchic humor that one would find at Gunshow, or even Hugsown (but not, curiously, Hung Sow). Oh, and KC also wanted it made know far and wide that he is known on Twitter as BarfCaptain, at least this week.

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¹ Ordinarily, I’d link to the original tweet from Goldstein, but I don’t want to do so because it contains a link to the offending site and I’m not interested in giving them traffic. Thus, the screenshot up top.

² I haven’t received explicit permission to use this creator’s name, so let’s just say that he is one of the successful ones, and you’d definitely recognize his name as a longtime pro webcomicker.

³ The letter is written such that I can’t tell if Useless Jerkasses, LLC is asking to use the webcomicker’s IP and pay him for the privilege, or if they’re offering to promote his content and charge him for the privilege. If it’s the latter, I have to say that their usual audience is absolutely useless to this creator.

⁴ Again, no link. I swear, it’s almost like all these linkfarms are just different aspects of one shell company, run out of some seedy office in Delaware, maintaining the fiction that they’re all different people. Jerkasses.

⁵ About whom some creators of long standing have vented on the web for being willing to pay criminally low rates for various aspects of comic book production. I have no direct confirmation of this from the people I know that work for them, but one must acknowledge elephants in the room even while hoping people you like aren’t getting glazed in elephant poo.

Or, TCAF Turns Ten, as the press release I’ve just received informs me. Reliably one of the best showrunners each year, Chris Butcher has put together a stellar lineup for this year’s iteration (to be held 11 and 12 May), including headliners Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Taiyo Matsumoto, Raina Telgemeier, Blutch, Gengoroh Tagame, Dash Shaw, Maurice Vellekoop¹, plus the crème de la crème of webcomics (pick ’em out from the list here, there’s too many for me to hunt ’em all down).

Quick shots:

• Kazu Kibuishi (Daisy Kutter, Copper, the Flight anthology, and a little thing called Amulet) announced yesterday that he’ll be one of the judges (along with some guy named “Pendleton”, which is surely not an actual name people give their kids) for this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition for schoolkids. The idea of art contests often brings up hard feelings in the independent arts, but the terms for the D4G contest seem pretty reasonable:
  

  11. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: As between Google and the Entrant, the Entrant retains ownership of all intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) in and to the Doodle (excluding Google’s rights in the Google logo/trademark). As a condition of entry, Entrant grants Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, transferable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display the Doodle for any purpose, including display on the Google website, without any attribution or compensation to Entrant. Entries will not be returned. [boldface original]

  Google can use your Doodle, but it’s still yours, and I’ll note that the prizes are far more fabulous than for any art contest when I was in school. The top 50 winners get a trip to New York City and a Wacom digital tablet; places 2 through 5 get US$5000 scholarships, and the overall winner gets a Chromebook, a US$30,000 scholarship, plus a US$50,000 technology grant for their school².

• Courtesy of John Campbell, michaelkeaton.net for all your Michael Keaton needs, with special guest appearance by Mister Rogers.
• As promised, you can now make your own Ryan North.

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¹ Of whom, Matsumoto, Blutch, and Tagame are making North American debuts.

² If homeschooled, they get a US$5000 grant for home, and get to designate a local library or public school to receive the remaining US$45,000.

Wherein I follow up on things that have already happened.

• 1106 days ago, regarding the previous day’s (somewhat abrupt) conversion of Webcomics Dot Com to a paysite, I wrote:
  

  I can see the argument that WDC takes [Brad] Guigar as long to produce on a daily basis as any of his strips, but with no recompense other than perhaps driving a few people to his strips (although I doubt many who frequented WDC didn’t already read his comics). That effort deserves remuneration, and Guigar has set what he thinks is a fair price.

  I just don’t think that many people are going to pay it.

  Guigar’s betting that the distinction between entertainment and information is sufficient that people will pony up a couple bucks a month for access (side note to those attempting such things in the future: “ten cents a day” sounds much less than “thirty bucks a year”).

  Unfortunately, with the exception of very few prominent brands, with high-quality content, pitching to niche audiences (we’re talking Wall Street Journal grade, here), this hasn’t proved to be the case on the internet so far — people pretty much equate “content” and “free”.

  Guigar’s got a brand, quality content, and a niche audience, but I don’t think this is going to work any more than when Murdoch attempts to monetize his entire media portfolio (and/or get fees from Google) this year.

  It’s looking back on pronouncements like that one that I wish this blog had a memory hole into which I could stuff particularly wrong things. Even by the next day it was becoming apparent that Guigar was onto something and his gamble was more likely than not to pay off. He’s kept actual numbers pretty close to his chest for the past three years, but it’s safe to say that the WDC paywall implementation was more successful than even he anticipated, and has remained so to the present day. After seeing him make another unexpected play in the spring with his monthly downloads, and having spoken to him extensively for years now (both on the record and off), I have come to the inescapable conclusion that One Should Not Doubt Brad.

• That didn’t take long. A mere five weeks after DC Comics announced that Jim Zub would be taking over as writer on Birds of Prey, it appears that said announcement lacked the crucial “no take backs” clause:
  

  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on things happening here so there was no confusion when the DC April 2013 solicitations went public.

  DC has decided to go in a different direction with Birds of Prey and it’s been decided that I won’t be the writer on board the series after all.

  Two thoughts: One, Zub remains the consummate professional; while disappointed, he knows that it’s just how things go sometimes¹; he even took the time to thank the people at DC that had been working with him on BoP. Two, sudden, public reversals do not give me confidence in any company; Zub was one of two creators replaced on DC books before any issues hit the stands, and there was the situation where Gail Simone was unexpectedly taken off Batgirl and reinstated two weeks later. I’ve worked for corporations where the decision-making process is marked by public careening back-and-forth, and it’s never a sign of a thought-out strategy or capable management².

  I can’t say if Zub is better off or not as a result of this change (surely, being away from an institutionally chaotic environment is good, but the loss of the pay/prestige is bad). Fortunately, this writing gig was not the only thing he had going for 2013 and this will free up time to work on his own projects, where he is the only person that can fire him³.

• Let’s end on a happy note. Calling back to her work on Marceline and the Scream Queens #3, Meredith Gran shared something awesome with you today. In the hallowed tradition of Adventure Time, Gran wrote songs in the MatSQ series (especially appropriate for the story of a band), and found herself needing to write a diss track for Marceline to sing.

  Who does disses better than professional rappers? Nobody! And who is housemates with the the world’s 579th greatest rapper, MC Frontalot? Gran! Front brought the braggadocio, Gran altered the rap to the structure of a Scream Queens song for print, but there was still the demo track of Frontalot channeling Marceline sitting on a computer, hidden from the world.

  Until today. Ladies and gentlemen, I can only hope that this means more comics will have accompanying soundtracks from Mr Alot or other geek-inflected acts.

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¹ And for their part, DC’s Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director are on the record that this outcome was only business and they always liked Zub.

² Another danger sign: an unwillingness to speak plainly or admit to mistakes. In the same piece that announced Zub was out, the EiC (Bob Harras) and ED (Bobbie Chase) were asked directly if Gail Simone’s reinstatement was a result of fan uproar. The verbatim response:

Harras: What we had was Ray [Fawkes] coming on for two months to help out, schedule-wise. We’re very happy Gail is back; she’s on the book moving forward, so to me, that was a moment in time where we were just looking for Gail’s next plot to come in and we’re moving forward.

Which is a pretty impressive non-answer to the question that was actually asked.

³ I hope Zub has taken the time to negotiate a good kill fee in his agreement to work for himself.

Since the sad death of Ryan North from sploding a few short weeks ago, we at Fleen have been wondering when the man-mountainous will once contained within his massive frame would force itself back into the world of the living¹. Actually, I suspect that North could have done so anytime he wished, but what vessel could contain his mighty essence?

Answer: nothing less than a 3D-printed likeness of pre-exploded Ryan North.

Although a cover story has been constructed wherein Ryan North never exploded and he is merely getting scanned to create a model of himself and then explode that, we at Fleen have discovered that North actually left behind a mathematical representation of his physical self which scientists from the future are now refining until it is sufficiently granular as to be indistinguishable from the original Ryan North.

Sure, they will 3D-print a spare likeness of Ryan North’s head and subject it to explosions as part of the subterfuge, but secretly they are making an entire, new Ryan North. When his life-force enters into the doppelgänger (like unto Galatea or the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves), it will become Ryan North, and possibly reach back in time to before any splosions such that it always was Ryan North².

In the meantime, they’ll be releasing the model specs just in case you want to make your own Ryan North and honestly, who wouldn’t?

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¹ Hey, it’s comics, you think he was going to stay dead forever? This is a guy who conquered space and time just to get some smooches.

² Likewise, this bending of time explains how new work continues to appear under Ryan North’s name — while a portion of it is surely from a buffer left behind at the time of his death, the majority was called into existence on the internet by force of disembodied will directly on the domain of pure, abstract information. No need to even telekinetically manipulate a keyboard and type!

Reports from Toronto also indicate that the late Ryan North’s dog, Noam Chompsky, has been seen traveling to the dog park and seemingly playing and reacting to commands, although no person has been seen to accompany him. Additionally, other dogs have been observed staring at a space slightly less than 2 meters above and to the side of Chompsky, as well as wagging at, sniffing, and begging scritches from the empty space. One small child was also noted as interacting with the air near Chompsky, eventually drawing a picture of the “nice, funny giant” that spoke to her.

Let’s recognize some achievements today, yes? Are achievements still a thing, or do the kids have a new word for them? Cheevs? Cheevos? Cheev-a-rama-lama-ding-dongs? Peoples is doing things, and we should notice.

• The Academy Award nominations hit this morning, and I should like to mention that among the Best Animated Feature nods is one for ParaNorman (a terrific film, by the way), whose production company is well-integrated into the webcomics world, what with people like Vera Brosgol and Graham Annable working there and webcomickers being given super-cool artifacts from the making of the film.¹
• Speaking of awards season, we’ve mentioned in the recent past that nominations are open for the Hugo Awards and the NCS Awards; now it’s time for the Eisners to collect worthy nominees. The relevant section is not too different from past years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2012. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Noted yesterday: webcartoonist/roboticist/popularizer of science Jorge Cham is talking about What We Don’t Know and the gaps in our scientific knowledge² via the auspices of TEDx³. One advantage to being a cartoonist when you hit the speaker’s stage — when it’s time to project something on the big board for everybody to see, comics are more interesting that slides full of text. Go watch The Science Gap: Jorge Cham at TEDxUCLA and then ask yourself: what don’t we know?
• Almost missed: John Kovalic has been creating Dork Tower strips since about forever, initially as a monthly comic in a now-defunct gaming magazine, and then several times a week. I’ll admit it dropped off my radar a while ago, but I’m glad to say I noticed something yesterday: as of 1 January, 2013, Dork Tower has been around a phenomenal sixteen years, with no signs of stopping.
• Similarly, I had fallen away from regular reading of Tom Brazelton’s Theater Hopper (largely because I’m not into movies enough to be the core audience, and partly because do you know how many comics I read in a day already?), but I did manage to notice that Brazelton wrapped the nearly-ten year old strip on 31 December 2012.

  Since then, he’s launched a Kickstarter to produce the last seven years of TH as e-books, as well as converting the first three years, which were dead-tree printed. A Kickstarter which just ticked over the (very modest) goal yesterday with nearly a month still to go, as it turns out. If you want to get ten e-books with nearly a decade’s worth of comics, such can be yours for as little as US$35, which is really a great bargain when you think of it — 35 bucks for about 3500 days, or a penny a day. You’ve got a change jar somewhere — crack it open.

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¹ I should note that one of those receiving a animation maquette was Ryan North, who at the time was living but has since exploded and thus is possibly a zombie himself now. If you got one of these gifts from Laika, take care that you don’t explode also.

² Where “our” knowledge refers to both the scientific community and that of society at large.

³ Contrary to rumor, TEDx is not A little-known cousin of Malcolm X, although he has spent his career organizing a series of multidisciplinary symposia by any means necessary.

Sometimes stories just grab a hold of you and don’t let go. Ryan Estrada, who does everything, was kind enough to send me review copies of two of the stories in the current The Whole Story bundle, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to send stories that would worm their way into my brain and refuse to vacate, but that’s the way it turned out. By the way, spoilers ahead.

• First up: Estrada’s own Plagued, involving endless locusts, raining frogs, and Hitlercats in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. It makes for a great bar story (Estrada draws himself relating it as an open-mic piece) and it’s pretty humorous, but then he follows it up with the in-his-own-words tale of a survivor of the tsunami.

  Looh’s Story is only eight pages long, but it’s packed with a sense of feeling helpless before the might of nature, the condition of losing everything, and the simple determination to regain what went away. Looh was lucky — his family (minus one cat) survived¹, but they lost their home, and the taxi and boat that formed the basis of their income. I don’t know if Estrada has any way to let us know how Looh and his family have done in the eight years since, but I’d be fascinated to find out.

• Estrada also sent along a copy of KC Green’s The Dog’s Sins, where it turns out that a quiet, elderly, slightly pain-in-the-ass dog may have been the most vicious criminal in all of the world, and at the end of his life it’s time to account for his wrongdoing. Unfortunately, dogs don’t have souls, so God and his representatives can’t try or punish ol’ Buster or hold him to account, so it falls to his owner, teenage Rachel, to be given a time of pointless purgatory in lieu of her pooch.

  She’s supposed to be silently contemplating Buster’s wicked ways, but she’s mostly wanting to let the heavenly bureaucracy know how much this sucks. She’s left haunted by the experience, as is her family who had lost her for five years of her short life. She’ll never be the same because The Rules say somebody has to be punished, fair or not.

  Green’s loose, comical style contrasts perfectly with the sense of the universe screwing with Rachel to no good end — it’s got to be a joke, and God’s not got a very good sense of humor. It’s bleak and spare and perfectly balanced between outrage and absurdity. That’s a lot of very heavy storytelling in only 22 pages.

  Both Plagued and The Dog’s Sins are available for another 21 days via The Whole Story Kickstarter, for a name-your-own price of one dollar or more, along with more than 200 pages of other comics. It’s hard to imagine a bigger bargain this season.

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¹ Including his previously-bedridden grandmother, who was “outrunning water like she is 20.”

Not nearly so much going on. But you know what? That’s okay! Because we’re Young Ones. Bachelor boys. Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists. And now I get to find out who in my audience is as middle-aged as I am.

• New Jellaby, courtesy of creator Kean Soo. I miss Jellaby something fierce, but as long as Keaner’s working on new stuff, I suppose we can all muddle through somehow.
• New Dr McNinja collection, which I think I mentioned I picked up last month. To elaborate on my micro-est of reviews then, Timefist makes the extremely involved, mythology-heavy, and long-running Army of One–Space Savers–Futures Trading mega-arc much easier to follow than a page-at-a-time pace.

  Also, it has the entirely adorable Judy Gets A Kitten and the Axe Cop crossover, Stolen Pizza, Stolen Lives. As the years go by, Christopher “Doc” Hastings becomes only more madcap, somehow.

• Speaking of Axe Cop, we now have a premiere date for the Axe Cop animated series: Saturday, 27 July, 11:00pm on FOX.
• Kristen Siebecker, original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, and certified sommelier, is continuing her work demystifying the fruit of the vine and helping people learn to drink like grown-ups (that is, to be able to tell what’s good from what’s bad, and to get into the habits of drinking better stuff, not more stuff). Her previous iterations of the Popping Your Cork series have been noted with discount codes, and the next session is no exception.

  Those of you¹ in Manhattan on Wednesday, 30 January from 6:15pm can spend 90 minutes learning about wine that makes the winter less dreary, and this time she’s got a chef buddy coming by with tasty little nibbles to go with. Popping Your Cork: Winter Blends goes for US$25, but because you’re cool, you can use discount code FRIEND15 for a 15% discount. The fun happens at Simple Studios, 134 W 29th St (2nd floor).

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¹ Of legal drinking age, naturally.

Hoo boy, where to start? Since we spoke last on Friday, the following things have occurred:

• In their continuing march to dominate independent artist merchandising, TopatoCo now has its own building, which is being leased from Sheriff Pony LLC¹. As a measure of the growth of TopatoCo, consider this brief history from TopatoCo Vice President of Kicking Ass and Taking Names Holly Rowland:
  

  It may not look like much, but it is a huge deal to us. Ten years ago, TopatoCo was a shelving unit in Jeffrey’s bedroom in Oklahoma. Seven years ago, it was a third of an office space. Five years ago, it was one full office space. As of now it is four consecutive spaces, five employees, fifty three clients, a 44” giclee’ fine art printer, and a publishing imprint.

  We have big plans for 2013. Stay tuned.

• In her continuing march to dominate independent artist themed anthology collections, Spike announced the contributors to The Sleep of Reason, a list which includes the likes of Aaron Diaz², Evan Dahm, and Carla Speed McNeil, three creators whose world-building will lend itself towards the creeptacular.

  Not convinced? How about KC Green, and Sophie Goldstein, whose work often tends towards the cutely humorous with an underscore of sorrow verging on menace? Not convinced yet? How about the no-brainer of the year, the woman whose work is the definition of atmospheric, existential fear-inducing dread, Emily Carroll? Oh, and 22 other creators/creator teams, including Spike herself. This one is going to rock any sock left tragically unrocked by Smut Peddler.

• Ryan Estrada, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via the medium of an online gameshow, has announced a launch date for Asking For Trouble: Thursday, 10 January (that would be this week) at 9:00pm EST. I know that the event invite says Japan Standard Time (GMT+9) instead of Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5), but I’ve confirmed with Estrada that it’s EST.
• Danielle Corsetto, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via two graphic novels she’s writing, has announced the first of them as an Adventure Time original graphic novel, to be illustrated by Zack Sterling, entitled Playing With Fire. It’ll be the story of Flame Princess’s romance with Finn, clock in at 160 pages, and show up in April. Sharp eyed readers may note that Corsetto is working on two graphic novels, but I’ve confirmed with her that the second is not another AT book; it will be an original story for another publisher.
• Returning from hiatus: Jim Zub and Shun Hong Chan’s Makeshift Miracle, moving on to what will form the second volume of the rewritten series. Less a return and more a new-material launch: Dave Roman’s Astronaut Academy will shortly have a second volume, and it’s serializing courtesy of publisher :01 Books. And because Roman loves you, Astronaut Academy: Re-Entry already has 25 pages of story ready for your enjoyment.
• The definitive numbers for Child’s Play 2012 came out on Friday, and the result is staggering: more than five million dollars were raised last year, eclipsing the prior year’s record by nearly 50%. For reference, the Child’s Play history looks like this (all figures in US dollars):
  

  2003: $250,000
  2004: $310,000
  2005: $605,000
  2006: $1,024,000
  2007: $1,300,000
  2008: $1,434,377
  2009: $1,780,870
  2010: $2,294,317
  2011: $3,512,345
  2012: $5,085,761
  To date: $17,596,670

  Not a bad first decade all at all.

• Finally, sneaking in just before press time, Bernie Hou announced on Twitter that Comic Chameleon (last mentioned three weeks back) is opening its submission process so that more creators can get in on the webcomics reading app that doesn’t screw them over. Looks like launch on CC is getting close.

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¹ Sheriff Pony LLC exists as a distinct entity from The Topato Corporation for reasons of Business.

² The Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

Just a little Marceline for y’alls; Meredith Gran referenced a bunch of album covers in her interior art and covers, and it’s fun seeing how they compare.

• One of the things that I really enjoyed about participating in the process that eventually produced the first NCS Division Award for On-Line Comics was the sense that NCS President Tom Richmond was planning ahead. I have written elsewhere about challenges faced by the NCS in terms of demographics, in terms of seeing the need to change but also overcome decades of tradition to do so. I’ve written about how the inaugural On-Line Comic division award wasn’t perfect the first time around, and how that’s okay. Perfect is the enemy of progress, and this award will continue to change.

  Tom Richmond was out in front of all of those discussions. It’s my belief that he, more than anybody else, was responsible for getting that first On-Line Comics division award approved, with the intention of adding to and tweaking it until it really does cover the breadth of work being done online (which may be about the time that the need for a separate online track attrites and all cartoonists are just cartoonists). That first round of add-tos and tweaks is here:

  Last year the NCS had a single division that was purposefully restricted to only daily strip formats as a way to test out their process. This year they are expanding it into two divisions, Long Form and Short Form.

  Online Comics: Short Form — Unlike last year, this division includes daily strip, single panel, Sunday strip, or partial/single page formats. Short form comics should be able to stand alone as a single narrative, even if it is part of a longer storyline like an adventure strip. They can be full page comics, like a “Life in Hell”, but if so they should be single page narratives that do not serialize their storylines.

  Online Comics: Long Form — These would be ongoing narratives told in full page formats. Basically an online comic book or graphic novel, where the story is fully serialized. [boldface original]

  I am excited that an organization built on tradition and The Way Things Were can look at itself and say, We could perform our mission better¹. I am excited to see which of the people that had critiques (sometimes quite pointed) of the NCS’s initial steps into recognizing webcomics work will recognize that there was a good-faith effort on the part of everyone involved last year, and that the same intentions hold this year. I’m excited to see growth is possible, and if the form of the awards this year is not perfect², to know that they will be closer to where they should be next year, and the year after that, and the one after that³.

• Speaking of awards, Howard Tayler (my evil twin) points out that the Hugo Awards have opened nominations, and that the Graphic Story category is once again up for contention. A couple things notable about that category:
  • Last year, it was removed from experimental consideration and given permanent status
  • The Foglios having removed themselves from consideration after sweeping the first three year, and Ursula Vernon not having an entry this year, we should be looking at a non-repeat winner this year
  • In the existence of this category, webcomics have won every year, beating out sometimes very large, very popular work from major publishers; it would be a shame to see that streak broken

  Just off the top of my head, in addition to Tayler’s own Schlock Mercenary, Christopher Baldwin’s Spacetrawler, Kris Straub’s Starslip, and Dave Kellet’s Drive would be worthy nominees. Anybody that’s eligible to make nominations that agrees with me, get on that.

• There’s been a flurry of webcomics creators reaching outside their usual gigs to engage in other kinds of stuff-making. In the past few days, I’ve noticed Danielle Corsetto writing two graphic novels, David Malki ! experimenting with motion-control puppets, the omnipresent Ryan Estrada teasing a game show, and Christopher Wright is almost more of a novelist these days (using the webcomic model, naturally). We can argue the relative merits of foxes and hedgehogs if you like, I’m just glad to have additional channels for creators to entertain me.

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¹ In the sense of being more inclusive in its membership; given that a part of the NCS mission is to throw a kick-ass weekend of fun and really wonderful people and booze, they could not possibly get any better.

² And guess what? They’re not, because we live in an imperfect reality, so let’s do what we can to make them better.

³ Remind me to tell you the joke about the physicist, the mathematician, and the engineer in Hell, being taunted by the Devil with the possibility of sex only if they could overcome Zeno’s Paradox.