The website teased on Friday is found here: http://www.the-whole-story.com/. Go get some comics and pay what you want.

But before I go too much further away from that topic: for the record, I am dead impressed. That’s amazing and kind of crazy. Please keep sending in webcomics suggestions; I’m still trying to build up a little bit of a buffer of reviews while I start work on some items for future columns, including (with any luck) a post-SPX interview with Matthew Reidsma about webcomics, more about webcomics and print, and maybe a piece ramping up to SPX….and my cool new bumpersticker, maybe.

Anyway, after a little time away from the computer (which was ideal and exactly what I needed, despite the grief I got from a bunch of my comics-minded colleagues at a recent get-together), I returned from my digital sabbatical to find an email from a friend of mine recommending Michelle Au’s Scutmonkey. Scutmonkey is a comic series (available online as well as formerly in print–I think it’s sold out at present) that Au started in the spring of 2003 about medical school and residency and such. It’s a fascinating (and wickedly funny) peek into a world most of us likely know very little about. Her FAQ section pretty deftly handles any ethical twinges you might be having (in theory at least) about the subject matter, and she’s got such a great sense of humor about the weird quirks of her job that’s it’s almost impossible–for me at least–to stop reading. Part of it are the quirky expressions on some of her characters, part of it is my autobio bent, and part is because it’s just weirdly compelling to me. It’s easy to read and interesting.

While Au is primarily a blogger, her blog does have her comics posted (and current ones, mind), when she isn’t busy with lots of other things (including, yes, really being a doctor. How awesome is that?). She also has two Scutmonkey submissions–“The Great Escape” and “Burn Baby Burn”–written by other folks working in healthcare, one of whom makes a grand escape and the other by a ‘beeper doc’ frustrated by particular restrictions about ways to convey instructions.

Again, Scutmonkey’s another webcomic I’d never seen (though, on that topic, I have to point you toward this cool article by Adrian of Count Your Sheep fame, which I totally enjoyed reading). I had an almost instant affinity for Scutmonkey because it visually reminds me so much of this zine called Velvet Grass that I loved, years and years ago. Au’s linework is bold and accessible, and at no point does any of the medical stuff sail over the heads of her readership. Even the ones which seem like they’d need some kind of medical context knowledge, like “The 12 Types of Med Students,” are more than able to stand on their own and are well worth the time it’ll take to have a look.

Hey, remember how last week Dr McNinja‘s Chris Hastings was all over the place? Forget Hastings; he sucks. Ryan Estrada is The Man. Let me back up a moment. Posted yesterday by Mr Estrada:

Over the last year, you may have noticed that this site has been a little quieter than usual. That’s because I’ve spent a year behind the scenes building up to this day. I’m officially a full time artist.

Today is the official launch of Cartoon Commune! The commune is John and my business site, which is how we’ll be making a living with comics. We’ll keep the business stuff there, and keep our respective sites rolling with free comics and content. We’ll be building it up more as we go, but right now we are offering custom comics. I’ll draw you a custom comic book about whatever you want, and you can do whatever you want with it. Finally all that training doing 48, 72, and 168 hour comics will pay off!

Okay, then more about how he’s the new artist at Life’s a Bluff, more chapters coming of Frank: The Comic and Aki Alliance, and how he actually has to go back to India for a bit to wrap up loose ends. He finishes with:

But since I’m leaving on a plane to India in a few hours, don’t expect to see any new comics from me today.

Okay, that was yesterday, no new comics yesterday. What about today?

Now we have to jump gears a little. When I saw the guest strip at Ugly Hill today, my initial thought was, “Hey, Paul’s wife had the baby”, and I started making plans for a little congratulatory something-or-other (Paul, send me your mailing address). And hey, by coincidence, the guest strip was by Ryan Estrada.

So was the guest strip at Goats. And Starslip Crisis. And Little Gamers, Overcompensating, Questionable Content, Scary Go Round, and I’m not sure how many damn others today.

In fact, I half expect to see Estrada’s handiwork over at You Damn Kid, which returns today from summer hiatus, but it appears to actually be Owen Dunne’s handiwork. Appears to be. In fact, careful examination of the MoCCA webcomics exhibit opening photos (which will now run tomorrow) show the presence of an individual who may be Ryan Estrada, having managed to simultaneously be in New York and Mexico.

Mr Ryan Estrada, you hereby win webcomics. Please try to use them wisely.

Update: Now that I’ve had a chance to continue the Monday trawl list, Ryan Estrada sightings continue with Octopus Pie, Yirmumah, Hero By Night, Dr McNinja, Hate Song, Multiplex, Patches, Sam and Fuzzy (extra strip), and White Ninja (guest art).

Holy. Crap. Did I miss any? No, wait, I mean, “How many did I miss?”

Answer: Dinosaur Comics, which wasn’t updated when I checked it earlier. And Wigu, which hasn’t updated for a while so I didn’t check, and DAMMIT RYAN STOP BEING AWESOME.

Second update: Okay, not going to try to keep up with these anymore. Post any new sightings in the comment thread (and watch for duplicates). We’ll try to get a complete accounting by tomorrow.

Apologies to Owen Dunne at YDK, as Estradamania caused me to completely overlook the announcement of his daughter’s birth (no permalink yet). Congratulations to Dunne, wife, and child.

But before the Ryanness begins, a quick thought for a friend: Happy Two Yeariversary, Ro.¹

So! Ryans! Ryan North, that is, as the Kickstarter for TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST has cleared US$200,000 (or 1000% of goal) and thus will have a live-action, internet-path-choosing stage adaptation in Busan, Korea, courtesy of Ryan Estrada:

To Be Or Not To Be: The Play Of The Book Of The Play. Shakespeare in Busan is going to transforming this book into a stage performance in South Korea as an incredible improvised play. AND since people all over the world are supporting this project, the performance will be livestreamed worldwide, and when a choice comes up, the entire internet will be able to vote. The play will be directed by webcartoonist and Machine of Death author Ryan Estrada. He feels sorry for his poor stage manager who has to have sets and props ready for thousand of scenes that you might not even choose, but HE KNEW THE RISKS.

Is it insane? ARE WE ALL LITERALLY INSANE?? It is impossible to tell.

Piling on top of that good news, The AV Club loved the heck out of North’s Adventure Time #10 (the choosable-path issue, coincidence!?) and also Meredith Gran’s Marceline and the Scream Queens. Meredith is, the last time I checked, not a Ryan, but reciprocally neither is Ryan a Meredith. They’re all doing terrific work, though, and that’s a cheering thought to take with you to the weekend. See you on Monday.

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¹ Although what’s with all the RTL text on the archive page, Randall? Jeeze.

The end of the year’s always dead time for webcomics, what with people wanting to enjoy holidays and eat pie and all, but a few things happened while we were all away. A bunch of us got buried under a metric crapload of snow (66 cm ’round these parts), I got severely behind on news, and by the time I came up for air, I just said “Screw it” with respect to writing any kind of year-end retrospective. But we’re back now, and ready to get back to the absolute finest in webcomics pseudo-journalism.

• From the Holy Crap He Did It Desk, word that Ryan North Estrada (edit to add: Dammit! Stop invading my subconscious, Ryan North!) finished his one month animated feature (animation portion) on Wednesday the 29th, and dropped straight into the post-production portion of the work (working through New Year’s Eve). The plan had been to finishing the rendering & compositing over the weekend and release today, but it didn’t quite all come together:
  

  There are still a handful of scenes to composite, but there’s no way we can get them done, uploaded, downloaded, edited, rendered and posted in time.

  But screw that — for all intents and purposes, Ryan Estrada made a feature-length animated film in one damn month, and shortly we’ll all be able to see the fruits of his labors. We at Fleen know that we are echoing all of you out there in Fleenland when we say Well done, Ryan.

• From the Hooray, I’ve Been Waiting For This Desk, Minus pre-order? Minus pre-order! One of the most justly-acclaimed webcomics of the past five years is finally coming to print form. Let’s let Ryan Armand give you the details:
  

  Hi! It is two and a half years late but I was finally able to manage something decent so suddenly there is a minus book available. It’s 141 pages, 9×12 inches in size, weighs almost two pounds and has a new story plus a couple of extra comics included somewhere in the middle. Will be taking preorders through January and should be able to ship the books out by the middle of February. It costs $40 before shipping in the US and a little more for outside the country to make up for extra shipping costs. A sketch will be included with all pre-orders and… I guess that’s it?

  Pick up GREAT Volume One while you’re at it.

• From the Not A Ryan, But Still Really Talented Desk, I (like a number of you) discovered The Wormworld Saga last week (it went up on Christmas Day), and hoo boy is it good. Long story short — Daniel Lieske is a German digital artist, and he’s launched an online graphic novel (first chapter now available) about a boy named Jonas, a secret room, and a summer break adventure that’s just about to be much, much more than he expects.

  If it starts a bit slowly, it’s only because Lieske has really excelled in conveying what life is like for a 10 – 12 year old — all boredom and adults and droning and waiting until you can start the fun you’ve been looking forward to all year. We’re just at the beginning of Wormworld; imagine Dorothy or Alice looking back at their childhoods and relating what happened on that fateful day with the rabbit hole or the tornado, but didn’t quite get as far as the fantastical.

  At this point, it’s an open question whether it’s Jonas or the reader with the greater sense of anticipation to see what happens next. Just be assured that a) the characters have got me hooked, hard; and b) the art is gorgeous. Go read it, and settle yourself in for what looks to be a a long, complex, deeply satisfying story to reveal itself over the coming months and years. The Wormworld Saga merits my highest possible recommendation, and just set the land-speed record for getting added to the blogroll over there to the right.

And what do I find in my Inbox? Our very first guest strip, featuring our Masthead Guy. That’s right, it’s time for another Estradarama, which today features the following comics as of press time, in no particular order:

• Wigu, Overcompensating, Scary Go Round, Anders Loves Maria, Shortpacked!
• Wapsi Square, Girly, Dresden Codak, Sketchies, Astronaut Elementary
• Skin Horse, Aslan, 8 Bit Theatre, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, PC Weenies
• Dueling Analogs, Lifemeter, Bunny, Guest Strip Project (appropriately enough), You’ll Have That
• Templar AZ, a special bonus Wonderella, Alma Mater, Dreamland Chronicles, Bellen
• Theater Hopper, and Sam and Fuzzy (bonus strip, scroll down to read), ComixTalk (blog), Real Life, Patches
• Unshelved
  Updated to add those updating after press time, or just missed the first time around; again, no particular order: Alien Loves Predator, Angry Bee With A Gun, Silent Kimbly, Butterfly
• Cow and Buffalo, Kawaii Not, Pictures for Sad Children, Project: Rooftop, Joe and Monkey
• Ihooky, Dominic Deegan, Dorkboy, Cyanide and Happiness, Count Your Sheep
• Digital Unrest, 2P Start, VG Cats (apparently, created for last year’s Estradarama, but not run until yesterday!), Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space
• Ninja Bunny, Horribleville, Left Handed Toons
  Updated to add: all additions past this point derived from Estrada’s hourly update (see here); everything above here discovered by Fleen and its readers
  Prometheus, Chairs For All Occasions
• Hilarity Comics, Robot Comix, We The Robots, River City Mechanical, Aki’s Comics Review (from the Lunchbox Funnies main page)
• Muffin Time, Sir Reginald (no address other than Estrada’s page), Able and Baker, extra Life’s a Bluff, extra Livin’ on Poker Road
• LOLBees

Please note that some of those may shift from their present linked addresses in the future. If last year was anything to go on, those 31 39 43 46 52 60 62 65 strips (plus two blogs, plus the empty strip, plus the comic book) are a bare fraction of what will make itself known by end of business today. But then there’s the mysterious 1/100 in the signature of all the strips. Could Estrada be attempting 100 guest strips in a single day?

And if you recall Estradarama 2007, you’ll remember that Ryan Estrada used the occasion to also launch the Cartoon Commune. This year, he announces the availability of a full comic book, written with John Baird of the Create a Comic Project, Create a Comic Project Presents: Climate Change. The 34 page book is available now through Lulu for the low, low price of $6.00 (or $0.50 for a download). Oh, and he drew a strip for the CCP, too.

Okay, you know the drill — let me know what I missed in the comments, I’ll add ’em to the bullets above in groups of five, and we’ll do it all again next year. We all know I’ve missed a zillion strips, but I can’t spend all day hunting them down.

In completely unrelated news: non-Estrada shake-it-up strip at Octopie, and a good, old-fashioned bidding war for an original strip. Neat.

Updated to add: As several people have pointed out, Ryan Estrada has called the total at 70, but discovered he only had 69, so he did an extra strip of Aki Alliance to bring it up to 70, then VG Cats ran its strip from last year, so we’re going to call it 70 + a comic book as the official total. Which means that as of this writing, we’re still about 17 sightings short — get cracking, people!

You know what? I was going to be doing the whole Pirate Talk thing in this post, but it’s hard to write in that dialect, so please content yourself with the title. Thank yarrr.

Anyway, is it just me, or has Estrada Day become a whole Estrada Season? It used to be that you’d look forward to the day, gather with your loved ones around the monitor, sing a few Estrada carols and drink some nicely-spiked Estrada nog … but now it’s like people won’t let Estrada Day finish. The full collection of Estrada Day strips is now being re-run with a new one going up every five hours — given at least 40 confirmed sightings from this blog’s staff and readers alone, that’s going to take at least the next nine days before we see them all. Which, now that I say it out loud, is pretty much the cherry on top of the awesome cake.

In other news:

• You’ll Have That promo videos on YouTube, and an original strip art sale for good measure. Seems Wes Molebash’s faithful compy is givin’ up the ghost, so email him (wesmolebash) at that free email service run by the Google folks to see if your favorite strip is still available. Prices range from $15 (print of a strip) through to $100 (original strips or various levels of commissioned originals).
• From Michael Rouse-Deane, an appeal to your better natures:
  

  The Kid’s Book Project that is helping raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation is getting close to being completed. Comprising of over 50 webcomic artists making one single page within a story none of them know the start or the end to, are making their page by only seeing the page either previous to their own or after their page.

  With artwork from Mitch Clem, Frank Page, Brandon J Carr, Ryan North, James Hutchinson and many many more, this book is spectacular whether the story makes sense or not. But that is the question, can over 50 artists actually create a story that works well?

  At the moment pre-orders are still available. It’s £6 per book, with £1.50 P&P for UK and £2.50 P&P for International Orders. There’s only going to be 500 printed and they’ll only be one print run, so if you don’t get a chance to find out the answer and also see what great artwork is inside, then you’ll never do!

• Speaking of webcomics in print, Pewfell creator Chuck Whelon writes that:
  

  A New full-color print edition of this long-running weekly webcomic is now available. In this volume Tina the Warrior Princess finds herself pregnant and, in order to make ends meet, Pewfell must take a job as wizard in the city sewer patrol. Meanwhile, a demented and zombie-mad dictator seizes control of local government and an army of chaos invades the city. Order your copy here.

• Speaking of Pewfell, it’s found on Modern Tales, which announced it’s new Fall Lineup the other day. Watch for editor Shaenon Garrity’s interviews with the new contributors soon (her first, with Little Dee‘s Chris Baldwin, is already available).

Okay, 37 by the count of Fleen staff & readers, and I’d estimate that he probably did in the range of 50 webcomics; in fact, it appears that he hit everything this side of the chronically-underreviewed Simulated Comic Product. I suppose we’ll have to wait for Ryan to come back from India to get the official tally. How about some stuff that has nothing to do with the prolific Mr Estrada?

As promised earlier: photos from the MoCCA reception.

• It was warm in the musuem: Jon Rosenberg (left) and Scott McCloud (right) contemplate the availability of air conditioning.
• Wizard scribe Brian Warmoth commits journalism with the assistance of Rosenberg.
• No good museum show is complete without a statement of philosophy.
• Slightly less than half of My Obsession with Chess.
• The Massachussets section: Questionable Content, Something*Positive, and Wigu original sketches and color prints.
• From sketches to final rendering: Scary Go Round, Diesel Sweeties, Get Your War On, Young Bottoms In Love.
• Inconvenient flash reflection: PhD, minus one face.
• Now showing on the LCD: The Formalist, Order of the Stick, My Obsession with Chess, Pup Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe, Delta Thrives, When I Am King, and Five Ways to Love a Cockroach.
• Crowd scene with webcartoonist and Narbonic strip.

By the time you read this, Ryan Estrada will be five days into his current big adventure. As you may recall, Estrada announced plans to start a comics commune in Mexico about two months back, and when I met him on the last day of San Diego, those plans were coming to fruition.

“I got turned down for a visa”, he told me, “so tomorrow I’m going to walk across the border as a tourist, which gives me 60 days to figure something out. I’ve heard it’s easier to change your status if you’re already in the country.” Monday morning, he and fellow artist John Campbell did just that, and if you’ve been following his LiveJournal, you know they’ve made it from Tijuana to Chihuahua (I can still never type that word without hearing the pronunciation of Les Nessman).

Estrada’s serious about the art — in addition to posting via WiFi, he’s carrying a portable studio that he built into an oversized piece of luggage, all Q Branch-style. He described lovingly the custom foam cutouts in the case for his laptop and other gear, and was somewhat wistful that he couldn’t go all the way and make the case sleek, brushed aluminum. Given the possibility of theft and having his experiment come crashing down, it’s a rather ordinary piece of luggage.

And he’ll need those supplies, since he has plans to conduct business from wherever he ends up. On 30 August, look for the launch of his custom comics business. And not just any custom comics: a fixed price will get you a custom 24 hour comic, straight from the heart of Mexico.

And because this is Ryan Estrada we’re talking about, there’s never just one piece of amazing news at a time. Starting tomorrow, CNN Headline News will be running Ryan Estrada Expeditions episodes as part of their weekend News To Me program. Tune in and let Mr Estrada know that we all hope he doesn’t get shot up by banditos (riding raptors or otherwise).

Nothing to do with Estrada, but it’s timely (thanks to alert reader Brian for the heads-up) … Warren Ellis is doing a webcomic:

Autumn 2007. On the web. Weekly. Free. freakangels.com.

Curiously, no comments as of this writing. With good reason, it appears.

Small things I found amusing today.

• Readers of this page know that I dig everything Erika ‘n’ Matt do over at Oh Joy, Sex Toy, but of late I’ve come to have a particular appreciation for one part of their work. The reviews are still helpful, the guest comics about the wide range of human experience still valuable and enlightening, their educational work still invaluable.

  But lately they’ve been absolutely killing it on the funny, and I am so here for it. No prize for guessing who the mysterious contributor to today’s comic is, for surely that disguise is impenetrable¹.

  

• Irony of ironies, Ryan Estrada was actually banned with respect to Banned Book Club, in a manner of speaking. Tell us the story, Ryan:
  

  I just learned the National Library of Korea, the 76 year old fortress that protects 800 year old foundational documents of Korean history through multiple dynasties, also has [a copy of ]Banned Book Club.

  And it’s two blocks from the last leg of my bike trail route.

  Guess where I’m going?

  I’ll be almost 500 miles and almost zero showers into the trip at that point, so I proooobably won’t introduce myself this time around.

  Got a stack of these ready to slip into any books I spot in the wild.
  

  But it was not to be:

  Wow, I’m not allowed in the National Library. Need an appointment, and can’t get one without my passport. Amazing. I didn’t realize this place was so locked down. Our silly book’s protected like a national treasure (There’s no treasure map on the back)

  Wow, wait, this means I was banned by the Korean government from reading Banned Book Club* this is the best day of my life.

  *because I wasn’t carrying my ID

Spam of the day:

Do you want to be on the first page (or even first place) of Google search results (not to mention paid ads)? Moreover, by paying only $20 per month.

Already there, thanks.

_______________
¹ Ahem.