You know when we don’t get blizzards? September. I long for September. And just in case September is too boring, what with the lack of white death from the skies, there’s a new con on the horizon that looks to be of particular interest to those of you reading this — think one part NEWW, one part ROFLCon, and one part trade show, if the not-quite professional society that Brad Guigar is building at Webcomics Dot Com were to escalate to face-to-face seminars.

It’s called Intervention. The goal here is to focus on those that make their art (whatever form that may take) and/or living via Internettery. And since getting a new con off the ground is an act of utmost optimism mixed with desperation, you really want a whirlwind of energy driving the whole damn thing; fortunately, anybody that’s ever spent time around sometimes webcomicker/sometimes glamazon Onezumi has spent the next ten minutes trying to catch their breath, so that’s good.

And since the programming track has an emphasis on the How do I make this work? aspects of Internettery, it’s a good thing that Oni’s married to Harknell, who keeps a number of webcomics hosted and happy and knows whereof he speaks. In particular, I’m told that the Web Development Track will feature real-time tutorials — walk-into-a-room-and-two-hours-later, new-website-configured-with-CMS-and-comics-updating type tutorials (with an equivalent spin to the Art track).

Oni & Hark had a pretty long run on con staff with Katsucon before spinning off to roll their own, and it’s my understanding they’ve got the help of a lot of experienced show-runners, so that’s good. Nevertheless there has to be a special challenge in any new show, and this one looks to come down to time and location: Intervention will run September 10 – 12 at the Hilton in Rockville, Maryland, or about 1.8km and zero hours from SPX the same weekend.

This is either going to make getting the audience in tricky at best, or create a reinforcing feedback loop as people make their way up and down Rockville Pike between the two shows. With Intervention’s emphasis on electronic, and SPX’s on print, it might actually provide a nice complement, as perhaps the after-hours programming at Intervention (plans are for round-the-clock programming) will. Might the two shows mesh well together? They might, rabbit, they might.

• In other (sadder) news, Cheyenne Wright, colorist of Girl Genius, has fallen ill, and it doesn’t look great right now; we’ll let Kaja Foglio take up the tale:
  

  The doctors are not yet sure what’s wrong, but it’s actually sounding fairly alarming. We’re quite worried.

  I will be setting up a fund-raiser (yes, probably more wallpapers, to start with) to help out with the medical bills. Freelance artists are, after all, notorious for their lack of health insurance. (Of course, if you just can’t wait for me to post those wallpapers, you can always send money directly to Cheyenne’s PayPal address).

  So, yeah. If the pool of webcomickers and freelance artists could get organized in one place with enough names for it to form a viable population for a health insurer to want to provide policies, that would be awesome. In the meantime, click back one page from that link and see what a difference color makes.

• For anybody that’s ever doubted that Lore Sjöberg is a comedic genius, I have four words for you: depeleted uranium beholder statue. Alternately: The Cyborg Name Decoder, which Lore has now ported to the iPhone and is available for your amusements. I don’t have an iPhone, but dang if this kinda doesn’t make me want one.