The webcomics blog about webcomics

Thank Glob QC Guest Week Is Almost Over, We’re Running Out Of Room For #buttrocket

You know what I like best about these guest strips? The fact that even those that ran initially without #buttrocket¹ were quickly amended to include #buttrocket, and they legitimately make the strips funnier. Today’s strip by Veronica Vera of Bittersweet Candy Bowl gets extra points for dealing with Garbage Person Ted from Jeph’s Tumblr. Thanks for that, Veronica, and also for continuing the unbroken tale of hilarity passed to you by KB Spangler, Zach Weinersmith, Christopher Baldwin, David Willis, Megan McKay, and Danielle Corsetto.

And oh my goodness, so many other things to talk about today.

  • Book! Kate Beaton, who is BEST, has been kind enough to share some process sketches with us, allowing us to see the evolution of Princess Pinecone (the titular princess of The Princess and the Pony, arriving at bookstores everywhere in one week). I love everything about this.
  • Also Book! Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh have announced the Kickstarter for their concluded-online (starts here), coming-to-print OGN, Lucky Penny. This puzzled me a bit when I heard the news this morning, as I thought that Lucky Penny was going to be published by Oni Press, and for them to have to self-publish would be a significant change.

    Turns out, Oni is still publishing Lucky Penny, so why a Kickstarter? Yuko and Ananth have anticipated your question and have an answer for you:

    We’ve increasingly found that the people who support us online and via Kickstarter are wildly different from those who would pick up our book in a store or buy from Amazon — and it’s those people (you!) who allow us to make a living. So we’re running this campaign to fund OUR copies of the book to sell direct to you, our fans!

    If this campaign doesn’t succeed we don’t get to make our personal copies. The book will still be available via your favorite local bookseller or comic shop come March 2016, but we won’t have personal copies for sale at conventions.

    I like this for a couple of reasons — one, transparency is always good; and two, I don’t think I’ve seen this kind of publisher/self-publish hybrid before, and I’m always interested in seeing new business techniques. Also three, backing the creators gets you extras that you couldn’t get from the publisher — thanks in the book, extra swag, and you’ll get your copies before the stores do As I write this sentence, the Lucky Penny Kickstarter is sitting just below US$12,000, or about 68% of its (very modest) US$17,500 goal.

  • Still Book! Raina Telgemeier continues to dominate the trade, what with taking the Favorite Cartooist and Favorite Nonfiction Graphic Novel categories at the Kids Read Comics Awards over the weekend, in addition to the Béd&eacure;lys Jeunesse Award in Quebec, in addition to the little matter of three straight years on the New York Times Bestseller List, including a clean sweep of the top four positions. Please tell me again how girls don’t read/understand/make comics. Please.
  • Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett! There’s a new announcement from LARDK about the second creator to contribute to his Tales of the Drive series: Fleen fave Dylan Meconis! And this time we have a story blurb — Nosh’s origin! And Christopher Hastings was kind enough to tell me the basic plot of his TftD contribution:

    Hmm, it’s so tough to comment without spoiling … it’s kind of a cross between Alien and this thing: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116142805.htm

    And funny!

    I’m glad he stuck in the funny part, because parasite stories are otherwise horrifying.

  • Return! Reptilis Rex, y’all. It’s back.

Spam of the day:

Give your Manhood a Boost

Nope!

JOIN TEEN WOLF’S TYLER POSEY AND JEFF DAVIS FOR

Nope!

Dr:OZ helps Rachael shed 25lbs of bellyfat for bikini season

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¹ If you can imagine such a thing.

#buttrocket, How Could I Ever Have Doubted You?

Special bonus Sunday post to reflect momentous happenings over at QC’s Guest Week-Plus-A-Couple-Of-Days. As noted in this space yesterday, Friday’s strip, initially #buttrocketless, was amended to incorporate #buttrocket. Then Jeph went and ran another guest strip today, this one by the incomparable Danielle Corsetto, with a callback to Goopy Kitty and every-damn-thing.

Also #buttrocket.

The entire saga may be observed by reading the contributions of Corsetto and her #buttrockety siblings (KB Spangler, Zach Weinersmith, Christopher Baldwin, David Willis, and Megan McKay by clicking here and then clicking forward.

Jaqcues says that there are still guest strips to run, with QC returning to his hands on Wednesday. Will there be #buttrocket in those strips? Maybe. Will Jacques break out #buttrocket as an easter egg in his own strips going forward? Oh glob I hope so. We’ll all find out together.

Note: as tomorrow is the scheduled blog tour entry for The Last Man (also discussed on Friday), if there is another #buttrocket sighting, it will get its own post so as not to detract. Thank you, and good evening.

No Sign Of #buttrocket, Citizens Urged To Remain Clam

No firm, shapely buttocks, no lace-trimmed thong, no rapidly-decomposing hydrazine ... is this even Questionable Content?

Or possibly they’re urged to remain calm; the ink ribbon in the teletype here at Fleen Central is really old and faded.

  • It appears that the magic has faded, but vague hope may be held out for next week, as Jeph Jacques allows for the possibility of return:

    I have a few awesome guest comics left so I will run some more next week! Have we seen the last of #buttrocket???? WE SHALL SEE

    None of which should be taken in a way that causes one to think that Megan McKay hasn’t turned in a terrific strip; it’s adorable, and one could argue more QC-ish than the past four days of gluteal missilry, and should be enjoyed on its own merits.

    Edit to add [6:00pm EDT 20 June 2015]: #buttrocket is too strong to be denied; the strip has mysteriously sprouted three more panels and now features #buttrocket. The #buttrocket panorama will be updated at a later date to reflect this.

  • As a consequence of the Cartoon Art Museum getting a lease extension¹, various events at CAM now have different run dates. More precisely, the following exhibitions have been extended to run to the (currently scheduled) close date of 12 September:

    Darth Vader and Friends
    Savage Dragon: The Art of Erik Larsen
    The Bronze Armory Showcase
    Songs and Secrets: The Art of Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells
    Small Press Spotlight on Geoff Vasile

    You’ve still got all summer to make your way to San Francisco and check ’em out.

  • Regular readers of this page may recall that from time to time, Fleen participates in blog-based book tours, usually for releases from our friends at :01 Books. There’s one going on now, in support of the second volume of Last Man by Bastien Vivès, Michaël Sanlaville, and Balak, due out Tuesday. If you haven’t read the first volume, it’s basically on the time-honored manga theme of the insane fighting tournament, but done by French creators so it’s over in three books instead of fifteen or twenty.

    There’s a lot going on in the book below the surface, and we’ll have a Q&A with the creators here on Monday, so be sure to come back then. Thanks as always to the incomparable Gina Gagliano at :01 for our review copies, and for doing all the logistical footwork in getting the blog tour set up.

Okay, we’re out of here; enjoy your weekend and remember tell your da you love him this much.


Spam of the day:

thermal & cold polymerization petroleum resin, petroleum naphthalene, tar and thousand-ton capacit

You’re the sons of bitches that lifted my credit card number to try to buy US$7000 worth of industrial chemicals, aren’t you? Only got one thing to say to you.

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¹ Meaning they won’t have to close their doors next weekend.

I’m Starting To Think That #buttrocket Might Not Be A Good Thing

Click to begin the sage of #buttrocket.

Hear me out! After this, what can Jeph Jacques ever run for guest strips in the future? Can anything ever match up to the beauty that is #buttrocket? David Willis adds his take on the lace-trimmed Thong o’ Doom today, adding his take on #buttrocket to KB Spangler (who is killing it with textiles in her own strip today), Zach Weinersmith, and Christopher Baldwin. All hail the #buttrocket. Give yourself to #buttrocket. The #buttrocket is.

Hey, want to see some cool, fun things on a day that desperately needs them? Me too!

  • Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett put up a teaser at Drive a while back that he was going to go the shared-universe side-story route, and yesterday we got the first details:

    I am so excited for the “Tales of the Drive” series. As you remember, I’ve gone out to my favorite pros working today, and invited them to write short stories set in the DRIVE universe. These are people I trust to write amazing DRIVE short stories. And today I can reveal the first: Christopher Hastings of Dr. McNinja and Adventure Time!

    I just read Chris’ story last night, and it’s so fun. So fun. You are going to love it. [emphasis original]

    I’m on record as really liking the heck out of Drive, and given the vast swathes of history and geography (astrography?) that LARDK has laid out, there’s plenty of fertile ground for creators to play with — who were all these emperors whose writings we see? What about those galactic powers we’ve seen in the star charts? Why, exactly, did Neuvo Chile get banned from ring travel? Over the past half-decade I’ve asked LARDK these questions and more many times and he stubbornly refuses to let go of even a crumb of detail, other than the fact that we’re probably going to see nine books in all to chronicle The Pilot’s War.

    With that in mind, I had a few questions for him, and LARDK had answers:

    On how many stories we’re likely to see:

    I’d eventually like there to be two dozen stories … running 6-15 pages, each. They’re set anywhere/any time in the DRIVE universe, either using characters we know, or completely new folks.

    On the limits he sets as Determinator Of What Happens In This Continuity:

    I’ve asked folks to (try to) stay with canon — but after that, they’re free to write and draw what they like. I’m not editing these artists: They’re all pros, and they know their way around a story.

    [Editor’s note: Brave. Very brave.]

    On who we can expect to see contributing and when:

    So far, there are eight artists who’ve said “yes” — and I imagine we’ll see those over the next 12-18 months?

    On come on, LARDK, don’t tease us, who’s contributing already:

    Folks who’ve said yes include Zach Weinersmith, Jon Rosenberg, Dylan Meconis, Phil Foglio, Jake Parker, Meredith Gran, and Jeph Jacques … so far. There’s another half-dozen super-talented folks on the “interested, but currently swamped” list, so we’re waiting for their project schedule to lighten up.

    On what shouldn’t need to be said but sadly does because it often doesn’t work out this way:

    Oh, and they’re getting paid a page rate that (I think?) beats most comic book work … so I feel good about that.

    Keep your eyes peeled for Tales of the Drive, the schedule for which is presently being determined.

  • Know who’s made a habit of sharing hard numbers on her business, making it far more likely that those who come after her will avoid falling into traps?¹ “Hurricane Erika” Moen, or as I should probably say, “Hurricane Erika” Moen and Matt Nolan (who sadly lacks a weather-related knickname, but I’m working on it), since they’re partners in all aspects of Oh Joy, Sex Toy. They did the world a favor by releasing that big ol’ bolus of data on their first OJST Kickstart, and they’re back with more:

    Kickstarter Updates!
    1) Current cost breakdown https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/erikamoen/oh-joy-sex-toy-volume-2/posts/1267433 …
    2) $2 backers get an extra wallpaper https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/erikamoen/oh-joy-sex-toy-volume-2/posts/1267470 … [backers only]

    At that first link, Nolan lays out the numbers for gross funding on OJST volume 2, rejected pledges, the fees associated with running the campaign, and the costs experienced so far. Everybody that looks on Kicktarter as a magic money machine², follow these public postings that Nolan and Moen are very kindly sharing — you’re going to learn how much time and effort go into fulfilling their obligations, and maybe even get to decide if that much work is worth whatever they net (hint: it’s not going to be as much as you think it is). This is a gift worth more than all the business courses that your art school never offered.

  • The only thing wrong with the interview that Noelle Stevenson had with The AV Club’s Oliver Sava (a very smart writer on comics) is that the opportunity did not come up for Stevenson to declare I’M A SHARK AAAHH, which I like to imagine is printed on her business cards. No email or website, mind you, nothing but:

      Noelle Stevenson  

    I’M A SHARK AAAHH

     
    That would be so rad.


Spam of the day:

It’s amazing in support of me to have a website, which is good in favor of my know-how.

If I ever feel like changing our site motto from Fleen: Try Our Thick, Creamy Shakes, then Fleen Is Good In Favor Of My Know-How would be a pretty good replacement.

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¹ I’ve been over that sentence three times and I’m pretty sure it says what I want it to, but damn it’s kind of clumsy.

² Or worse, constructs elaborate arguments as to why a creator doesn’t deserve [a level of funding] or is making too much money and screwing the backers. Stop that.

Gag, Running, Etc

If there’s one thing that we at Fleen enjoy, it’s a running gag. There’s Ryan North and the running gag that gets revisited every 1000 strips. There’s the Final Fate Of RPG World, which was a running gag before this blog launched in 2005. There was the majesty that was #buttrocket, and our habit here at Fleen of both excessive footnoting and an unrepentant man-crush on Brad Guigar¹.

But I can’t recall anybody taking something so pedestrian, so quotidian as a garden-variety Wondermark bit of random weirdness and spinning it into endless variations on a theme. Gentle readers, I invite you to consider the many variations of Check out my sick elephant!

Sick as in diseased, an emphasis on checking out, sick as in sick humor, sick as in gravely ill², sick as an excuse to work on the multiple meanings of trunk, sick as in falling apart, and a three-fer involving a previously sick elephant that becomes a thicc elephant, and finally provides a dad-joke inversion that I will not dignify with a transcription.

Responding to my fascination/horror at this strip, Wondermark creator David Malki ! promised/threatened more. Should you see him this weekend at XOXO Fest in Portland³, please convey to him my heartiest congratulations/condemnation.


Spam of the day:

We found your next girlfriend today, she is sexy, naughty, pretty and she made a very sexy video message that you need to watch.

So wait, she’s thin but not too thin, has a big rack, hips but not baby-having hips, and is sexy but not in a slutty way?

_______________
¹ He’s dreamy.

² Gravely, I see what you did there.

³ Other webcomics types in attendance or at least walking around: the aforementioned North, Lucy Bellwood, Shing Yin Khor, Erika Moen, Blue Delliquanti, Taneka Stotts, Graham Annable, Lisa Hanawalt, Matt Furie, and MariNaomi.

Numerous other webcomicky (or at least webcomics-adjacent) folk will be across town at Rose City Comic Con, including Matt Bors, Molly Muldoon, Barry Deutsch, Jennie Breeden, Indigo Kelleigh, Kel McDonald, Kerstin La Cross, Kory Bing, Rebecca Hicks, Lucas Elliott, various members of Helioscope and artists associated with Nucleus, for some reason the US Navy, and Katie Lane.

Early Meme Stage: Go

This day in Great Outdoor Fight history: And that was it. Speculations range from the Ruling Body to signature panini presses to Gyne-Lotrimin; Lyle is actually fairly coherent; Philippe introduces himself in case he was forgotten. There will be one day’s breathing space before he launches on his own adventure to the Transfer Station, the brave little guy.

So what I’m learning this morning is the degree to which searching for a hashtag at Twitter is hit-and-miss; the website will give you different results depending on whether you’re logged in or not, and will provide only a fraction of results regardless. I bring this up because the Twittersphere hashtag #webcomics is exploding right now as creators post an eye-catching image and follow its instructions. Normally, I don’t embed images in the middle of the post but I feel I should in this case; here you go:

Using the Twitter client on my phone (that would be TweetCaster) and scrolling back, I seem to have a fairly complete history of the rapid (and accelerating) use of the image + tag combo (#webcomics by itself, naturally, predates today). It appears that the first use of the combo was by Taneka Stotts who posted about Full Circle at 09:56am EDT¹. The next half hour or so saw a few more creators hop on the bandwagon (along with copious retweets), then things started to really pick up.

A bit less than an hour after Stotts kicked the whole thing off, Kate Ashwin of Widdershins noted that it had become a great tool for discovering new comics, elevator-pitch style. It’s not like nobody’s heard of, say, Questionable Content by now, but if you hadn’t, wouldn’t you want to read it based on the five words description?

butts butts butts butts robots http://www.ass.golf #webcomics

I’m a little disappointed that Jacques left out the fairly obvious #buttrocket reference, but those were guest strips.

So there’s your task for today — find a Twitter client that doesn’t abbreviate hashtag searches and go looking. I’m guessing that anybody that can do a good job of condensing the essence of their comic into just five words can write pretty well in other contexts². If you find a new favorite, do be sure to share it with the rest of us.


Spam of the day:

Spring Specials on Roofing Installation

Why, as it turns out I am in the preliminary stages of getting some roof work done. I think that I’ll definitely use the services of an anonymous email from a bogus return address with warnings all over the page in Gmail, instead of talking to the contractor that’s done all the home repair/renovations on my house since I moved it. It just makes sense!

______________
¹ I presume that the Five Words image is also her work; if anybody can confirm this (or provide an instance of earlier use), please let me know.

² Case in point, my perennial favorite A Girl And Her Fed was condensed down to Haunted X-Files with dick jokes which is just poetry.

A Scoop And A Spooky Comic And A Stripperversary

  • SDCC rolls along and it appears that webcomickers have deigned to let showgoers live another day. Hooray! In the meantime, it appears that the guys behind Penny Arcade are not content to merely put together a Kickstart to make a live-action webseries out of their noir-robot tale, Automata, wherein they’ve raised more than half of their very specific goal of US$322,637.09 in less than two days. Nope, it appears that they were fooling us when they said they would not be at the show in 2015. They snuck in all sneaky like! Proof!
  • Everywhere else, did you feel a bit of a chill down your spine earlier today? It’s possibly because Emily Carroll has released a new comic, a rare (for her) modern-day tale of two girls, a diorama, and unseen (perhaps unsuspected apart from an increasing sense of dread) ghosts of somebody not happy.

    The Groom is Carroll’s most subtle work to date (and that’s saying something), with the horror hinted at around the edges of the experience of the tween protagonists. Read one way, it’s just a case of thing found, got bored, slightly creepy nature gave the excuse to get rid of it. Read another way, there’s evil a’plenty in the suburbs, and the supernatural version could pale in comparison to the everyday, banal version. Like all of Carroll’s comics, this carries the highest possible recommendation.

  • Confidential to Jeph in Easthampton: 3000! That’s a hell of an accomplishment, even if only 0.2333% of those strips featured #buttrocket.

Spam of the day:

Forskolean …

Nnnnoooope. Not goin’ there. Whatever you’re selling, it’s got too much possible innuendo wrapped around it.

I’m Actually Torn Between Pinnacle And Cradle

And that’s it. As quickly as it zoomed across the sky –spreading wonder, and mayhem, providing counterpoint to philosophical arguments, and landing in faces both undeserved and richly so — #buttrocket has left us behind. Jeph Jacques has picked up his normal storyline, with nary a mention of the petabyte of porn carried by 2015-TAYLER-AWESOME. Goodbye, #buttrocket, may you find a worthy place to deposit your payload¹; you were perhaps too good for this world.


Speaking of too good for this world, the news broke too late for me to write about it yesterday, but Brandon Bird has crafted no less than the pinnacle — nay, the apotheosis — of art. I speak, naturally, of a series of thirteen oil paintings of Shia LaBeouf encompassing all of his regenerations.

Pack it up, world. Museums, try your best to get the eleven paintings still out of the hands of private collectors, in the hopes that someday all thirteen may be presented together as time, fate, and the universe intend. Those of you without the wherewithal to purchase an original can still get signed prints, or get the entire series of in one glorious bolus of Shia LaBeoufosity. Get it now. Do it for the children.


Spam of the day:
I was going to include one, but the contents of my spam folder now reads Shia LaBeouf over and over for about ten thousand lines. Creepy.

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¹ So to speak.

Third Time’s The Charm

It just keeps getting bigger and more beautiful. Click through, then click "Next" to follow the epic story of #buttrocket.

When Jeph comes back from his vacation (and happy birthday, Jeph!), I hope to hell that QC becomes all #buttrocket, all the time. Add Christopher Baldwin to the list of awesomest people ever (which presently consists of KB Spangler and Zach Weinersmith).

Who wants to see the floor map for this year’s San Diego Comic Con? Well too bad, because you’re gonna, mister. As usual, you can download the entire thing [PDF], or browse around below for the guide to Webcomics and the Webcomics-Adjacent. If you’ve been before, people that you want to see are mostly in the same places as past years. As always, if there are corrections or additional detail, I will post as I receive them and update here.

As in past years, the floor divides roughly in half where the hall bends about 15° clockwise. Also as in past years, we’ll consider those halves separately.

The Low Numbers
Let’s start over to the right side of the map, which is the side of the building away from the stadium parking lot where so much offsite stuff will be found. It looks like this:

The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions are all reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

The Sexy Lagoon
Centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but not too far.

:01 Books Booth 1323
Alaska Robotics
with Marian Call¹
Booth 1137
Blank Label Booth 1330
Comic Bento
(the exhibitor formerly known as
Prince Blind Ferret
Booth 1231
Cyanide & Happiness     Booth 1234
Dumbrella Booth 1335
Girl Genius Booth 1331
Monster Milk Booth 1334
Penny Arcade Booth 1334
PvP and Table Titans Booth 1318
Scallywags
International
Booth 1332
Sheldon and STRIPPED Booth 1228
The Oatmeal Booth 1021
TopatoCo Booth 1229
Two Lumps Booth 1230

Notes:

  • Blank Label is the increasingly-disused name for Willis, Spike, and whoever’s sharing space this year, and if I heard correctly Spike won’t be there this time.
  • The biggest bummer about not attending this year will be missing out on seeing my good friends at Dumbrella, who provide me refuge from the floor each year.
  • There’s always a rotating roster at TopatoCo; we’ll let you know who’s gonna be there as we become definitively aware.
  • Penny Arcade and Blind Ferret have opted out of SDCC; as giving up your booth means waiting a hell of a long time to get another one, this is likely permanent. Correction: Blind Ferret will be attending, but under the Comic Bento name; we’ve noted their inclusion above.

Small Press Is The Best Press
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

Bob the Angry Flower    Table K-16
Ben Costa Table O-07
Keith Knight Table K-15
Kel McDonald Table M-13
Wire Heads Table M-01

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Cartoon Art Musuem    Booth 1930
CBLDF Booth 1918
BOOM! Booth 2229
Oni Press Booth 1833
Gallery Nucleus Booth 2643

Notes:

  • Gallery Nucleus will feature arty types when they aren’t hanging out at Mondo down in booth 835. Keep an eye out for your Scotts C, your Beckys and/or Franks, and alumni of the various Flight anthologies.
  • No confirmation yet on which webcomickers will be at the BOOM! booth when, but I’d expect a pretty strong rotation.
  • A San Diego without Keith Knight is weird, man.

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find the area where Unshelved and Axe Cop used to be. Jeff Smith’s totally a webcomicker these days, though — you’ll find him sharing space with the incomparably good Terry Moore at Booth 2109.

Going back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and Image megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635.

High Numbers
There’s still some neat stuff if you keep wandering past the video games, Star Wars, Legos, and suchlike.

Click to embiggen.

Give yourself half an hour or so, try not to spend all your money on Copic markers (Booth 5338), and you’ll find both Udon Entertainment (home of such worthies as Christopher Butcher and Jim Zub at Booth 4529); and The Hero Initiative (at Booth 5003). Zub’s Skullkickers cohort, Edwin Huang will be in the Artists Alley at table DD-14, and Katie Cook will be at table HH-17.

Offsite
The offsite components of SDCC just keep growing year after year; the massive parking lots by the stadium and the north end of the Gaslamp, and the field by the Hilton, are likely to host enough to keep you busy whole days.


Spam of the day:

SEO become very hard nowadays, i know what can help you,

If SEO remains very hard for longer than four hours, SEO should seek medical attention.

_______________
¹ Be sure to thank them for making Space Weird Thing.