As we start can I note that two new Achewoods in two days is a trend that should be encouraged? Yes, I believe I can.

• Also worth encouraging: the previews of forthcoming graphic novels that we’re getting a page (or so) at a time. Things like the really fun Cow Boy, giving us four or so pages of Boyd Linney (ten years old, bounty hunter, righting the wrongs of his family) in each update. If you haven’t been reading it, now’s the perfect time to jump on, as the thirty pages that have been released so far have brought us to what’s sure to be a pretty epic shootout.

  Likewise, the always-delightful team of MechaYuko-Ananth are using the next several updates of Johnny Wander to tease us with pages from their forthcoming Oni project, Lucky Penny. One page so far with the promise of another eight pages in February, which should be just enough to whet one’s appetite for the full book, which doesn’t yet have a release date (boo).

• As mentioned earlier in the week, Scott C opened a series of readings/drawing demos for kids in Princeton, NJ last night, and lucky for us Kate Beaton was there to document the evening. The crowd appears to have been held in rapt attention by the dynamic Mr C, and by the possibility of coloring¹. Did the young lady with the caterpiller realize she was being sketched? Surely Matthew and Jessica must have suspected, since at least one of them joined in with the arting.

  I’m not entirely sure what the odds are that any of those kids will remember last night’s fun times as one more encouragement that helps make drawing a life-long pursuit, ultimately leading to pro-level cartoonings; probably not great, but you never know. I just like to imagine one of them finding those images in twenty years or so and realizing I met Scott C and Kate Beaton when I was six? Dang.

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¹ Although Beatoun has made soume public mentioun of mouving back tou Canada in the near future, oune can see that she’s “goune native” froum her time in Broouklyn. Spelling “colouring” without a “u”? I think that’s almoust enough to get your Canadian passpourt revouked.

Today, many are creating a comic (simple is fine) to describe what you’ve been doing each hour of the day. Haven’t been reading them? Pick a webcomicker, check their twitterstream, there’s a good chance they’ve got the comics there. My favorites today have been from Anthony “Nedroid” Clark, even though (as of this writing) he’s only up to 1:00pm. Special notice should, as always, should be given to John Campbell, probably the most prolific practitioner of Hourly Comics, as he’s spent the majority of days in the months of January 2006-2012 drawing them.

• For your consideration: Rich Stevens is making plans:
  

  I guess it’s time to see if I can Kickstarter a humongous comprehensive ebook edition when I hit comic #3,000.

  That strip he mentioned, number 3000? Number 2992 went up today and he updates like friggin’ clockwork, so you can expect it on Monday, 13 February 2012. Mark your calendars, bet the farm, bet the kid’s insulin money — it’ll be there, and then we’ll see what a 3000-comic collection looks like. My guess: pixelicious¹!

• Speaking of countdowns to things happening on Monday the 13th: Reptilis Rex launches then. The mysterious protection-program participant known as “William Tallman” will be teaching us all about secrets of the lizard-men from the hollow earth. Looks educational.
• Finally, in today’s BurleWatch™, sometime in the past 10-12 hours, the Order of The Stick reprint drive crossed the US$343,416 mark, making it one of the Top Ten of All Time Kickstarter projects. As of this writing, it’s nearly ten thousand dollars further on (US$355,223 to be specific), and probably in the 8^th or better slot.

  Near as I can tell, the top fundraiser of all time is this (admittedly cool) design project from December of 2010, with a total of US$942,578 from more than 13,000 supporters. I’m not quite sure that Burlew can hit those kinds of numbers, but he is more than a third of the way on both money and supporter count in about a third of his allotted time, so I’m not counting anything out at this point.

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¹ Shut up, it is too a word.

Answer: a whole damn lot. In the less than 24 hours since I last posted, Rich Burlew has added more than 500 supporters and US$63,000 to his already-impressive numbers so my prediction of tapering off to 325 large as a final tally? Busted. Let’s just shoot the moon and call it a cool half-mil. And yes, I know I said the widget was so I wouldn’t have to keep coming back to it. But it’s just so compelling.

• Speaking of dollars and the passage of time, let’s talk Jin Wicked for a moment. Ms Wicked was the creator of the much-missed Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break (entertaining for a half-decade but gone lo these near-four years) and continued her daily autobio comickin’ with A Dollar Late and A Day Short (for about two years, ending in September 2010 with a meditation on dying). She’s back, with A$L&ADS turning in what is hopefully the first of many new updates.
• I’m particularly glad to see A$L&ADS come back, as it may nicely fill the gap that will be left as Bucko hits its 102nd and final update, precisely filling one year with the self-described dick and fart joke murder mystery. At least, it started as a murder mystery, and it really turned into something much deeper. The journey that Bucko and his friends took was really about crossing the boundaries of enclaves (in this case, Portland hipsters) and learning about other tribal groups (bike fixers, steampunkers, Suicide Girls, juggalos, cops, and book fetishizers), each of whom was given that which we generally deny the Other: a chance to be seen as their own people, each with virtues and reasons to like them. Guys, this comic made me consider the possibility that juggalos are actually people and for that I will both thank and curse Erika Moen & Jeff Parker in equal measure.

  I have just one quibble with Bucko, and it’s not forcing me to reconsider my prejudices regarding murder-clowns. It’s that the “murder mystery” part of the story kind of fell by the wayside. I mean, that dude is still dead in the bathroom (although presumably they moved the body), and it never got resolved. The Scooby Gang would have figured out it was the crooked land developer who stabbed the guy before making plans for group sex, not that that is a disturbing mental image in any way. Anyway, guy’s dead and the cops are too busy gettin’ it on in the cruiser, which means the ultimate lesson of Bucko is, Whatever life throws at you, make sure you sex it up, which you have to admit is a pretty good moral. Carry on, Parker & Moen, I rescind my complaint.

• Let’s finish up with a quick schedule of appearances for Scott C, who will be doing drawing and craft demos around the New Jersey/New York area for the next couple of weeks, starting this Thursday, 2 February, at the Barnes & Noble on Rt 1 southbound in Princeton. Unfortunately, there’s no way I’ll be able to get from work to that store in time for the 6:00pm start, so everybody say hi to Scott for me, hey?

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Hmmm, no footnotes. Weird.

Firstly, some things I missed when sick (boo, hiss) last Friday: the irrepressible KC Green not only kept TopatoCo from burning down while his indenture-holders Jeff and Holly¹ were off in the Bahamas, he also hit Gunshow #500 in a suitably Snakespearean fashion.
Also, for those planning out what to do in the coming week, Angela Melick² will be giving a talk on writing comics at the Vancouver Public Library on Monday, 6 February, starting at 7:00pm. Watch out for the crazed, killer squirrels.

Also, in today’s Holy crap, did you see the OoTS Kickstarter? update, Rich Burlew has now exceed the previous highest-funded comics project on Kickstarter by nearly 150%, and is rapidly closing in on a quarter of a million friggin’ dollars after less than ten days. I’m putting the over/under at US$325,000, and the supporter tally at an even 5000 pledges. Of course, if the pledges get a second wind, we’ll see numbers that may take years to be equalled.

Now, to business³. Last week saw the debut of Jim Zubkavich’s Skullkickers on Keenspot, the news of which was previously discussed. Mr Zub has kindly agreed to answer some questions about the web-release version of SK, why the parallel channels for comics distribution, and what to expect in the future. But for those with impatient tendencies, here’s the money quote:

In our first week at Keenspot we had more unique IP visits (i.e.: new readers) than all three printings of Skullkickers #1 combined.

For full context, read on.

Fleen thanks Jim Zubkavich for his time, and also for comics that feature enormous slavering monsters getting kicked in the head because that’s awesome.

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¹ Don’t call her “Tallahassee”. Just … don’t.

² Right-hand rule represent.

³ If you mentally pictured Mark Wing-Davies and David Dixon toasting To business!, I like the way you think.

So let me just point you towards some nicely informative (verging on rebuttal) comments from Gordon McAlpin regarding my characterization of iBooks Author’s EULA yesterday. He may be my one-time nemesis¹, but Gord² is a smart guy.

Oh, and because it’s easier than constantly pointing out how they’re doing:

Whatever number is associated with that OoTS campaign³, just assume I’m muttering Holy crap under my breath.

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¹ Cf: here and here for the full story.

² Can I call him “Gord”? That’s really got more of a Canadian feeling to it. Although it does offer some intriguing possibilities regarding movie puns. Klaatu barada nikto, y’all.

³ So to speak.

So Rich Stevens turned 35 a few weeks back and celebrated by sharing gifts with you, the members of the world that are not Rich Stevens. These included special pricing on merch and free shipping, but also an ebook for free download containing a whole mess¹ of his comics.

Then earlier this week, he shifted tactics, making a second ebook of comics, this time specifically for the iPad, utilizing the brand-new iBooks Author app, again for free. Free turned out to be a critical distinction, as charging for it would open up the can o’ worms that is Apple’s iBooks Author EULA which would require a large cut of revenue to Apple as well as their permission to distribute it through their store. He may well be the first person out of the gate with a release produced via iBooks Author; certainly anybody that got their hands on the tool day-of-release is still waiting for Apple’s approval to sell content.

Rich Stevens don’t got time to screw around waiting for corporate approvals — guy gets an idea Monday, experiment launches Tuesday, Thursday he writes up his impressions.

Some 10,000+ downloads later, his most important conclusion may be that a significant number of readers out there would love to have a delivered-in-chunks, read-at-once model for their webcomics. Sifting through RSS feeds, remembering to hit sites, making time to read one of each of X number of strips per day², relying on bandwidth or signal at the time — for a large number of people (and probably growing as tablet use spikes upward) will find a bursty delivery, followed by the opportunity to read ten or fifteen minutes worth on the train, waiting for an appointment, or over lunch (wherever you happen to bef … I think the iPad part of this is key) to be an optimal experience.

This first delivery dropped a month’s worth of strips, leading to an easy magazine metaphor; should Apple find some way to have a rolling approval for this kind of distribution (instead of requiring pre-approval for each “issue”), and likely if they can permit creators to keep more of the fruits of their labor (30% is somewhere between usury and science fiction), this could be the first iteration of that Next Big Thing that forward-looking webcomickers have their eyes on³.

There will be further experiments and refinements — Stevens knows that fast turnaround and incremental improvements reach a good final state much faster and cheaper than trying to get to 100% on the first go — which process requires input. One key question (from my perspective as a non-iPad owner) would be how to adapt this model away from a single platform; I don’t have an answer and wouldn’t expect Stevens to have one yet either, considering the entire thing is about three days old. But if you have thoughts on the matter, the discussion is taking place on Google+. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

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¹ One of the more obscure English measurements.

² For me, X ranges as high as 75 or 80 and as low as mid-30s, depending on the day.

³ In my opinion, one of the most useful things that Scott Kurtz has done via his occasional participation in print vs web shitfights is to very publicly never lose sight of the fact that webcomics as we now know there are a transitional mode of distribution. There will be a next thing, whether it’s some form of e-magazine, or the only slightly hyperbolic direct-to-brain HyperComics that get thrown around from time to time.

Not permitting webcomickers to fall into the trap of print comickers who don’t see a way to adapt is crucially helpful; just living with an understanding that business model and technological change are a given gives the current (and more likely, the next) generation of comics creators a better chance at not being left behind by those changes than some of their predecessors have proved to be.

Benign Kingdom¹, which Kickstarter was sitting on for a while, has gone live. The principals involved are Yuko Ota, Evan Dahm, Becky Dreistadt, and KC Green (who’s involved in nearly every cool comics Kickstarter anyway). They’ve got four art styles that are radically different from each other, but each of them is at the top of their game and will do an amazing art book.

In addition to hitting 25% of goal in the few hours since their campaign went live they also have a secret weapon that all but assures success.

Ladies and Gentlemen: George².

He’s got a history in running independent publishers, a day job making comics happen for Oni, who have published one or two comics projects you may have heard of. He’s worked either high-level staff positions or behind the scenes of numerous conventions, appearing where things needed to be done and making the necessary arrangements. His cheery demeanor masks an organizational genius, one for whom the words on time and as promised carry the same import as I like to breathe do for ordinary civilians. It’s his involvement that makes me believe this line from the Kickstarter pitch:

If this goes well, it could be the foundation of a much bigger project in the future: Benign Kingdom could print more books, and maybe involve other artists! Thank you very much for your support!

… has already been planned for, and merely awaits the passage of time to bring to fruition. This isn’t a one-off, it’s a new publishing venture, much like Box Brown’s Retrofit Comics, with the intent to bring you stuff you wouldn’t get to see otherwise, from creators who need to connect to their audiences in a fundamental, dollars-and-cents way. In the time that I’ve been writing this, another 5% of funding has been achieved, including a top-tier reward³ (which I confess, I didn’t think would sell, but shows you what I know) claimed. Right now it’s four friends (plus George) working to a common goal, but in a year or two it could be the next Flight.

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¹ For the moment, it’s not showing up in Kickstarter search, so use the direct link. I imagine that wil sort itself out in the next day or so.

² Or Mr Rohac, if you’re nasty.

³ The top-tier goes for US$1250, and the key differentiator from lower tiers is: You are drawn as the ruler of Benign Kingdom, by the four artists. As of this writing, four more instances of this reward are available, which opens the possibility of a dynastic conquest for the Benign Kingdom’s throne as the various pretenders vie with each other for supremacy. The resulting blood feud is expected to last for two and a half centuries.

I’ve been waiting all day for some news to officially break so that I can expand on things, and it stubbornly refuses to.

Break, that is.

In the meantime, let me note with some amazement that Rich Burlew (cf: yesterday) is also running a Kickstarter with the intent of putting some older volumes of Order of the Stick books back in print. In about three days, more than 2000 backers have raised more than US$97,000, overachieved his goal by more than two-thirds (those full-color, full-size glossy books don’t come cheap), and still have 27 days left to go.

Oh, and he’s got the second most-funded comics Kickstart ever (by a margin of more than US$50,000), and is rapidly closing in on slot #1. These numbers are changing even as I type this, so expect significantly larger numbers by the time things wrap on 21 February.

So frontloaded, in fact, that we have to get a milestone comic (SMBC #2500, woo!) and the launch of an established creator’s third daily webcomic out of the way in the intro just to get to everything that’s happening today. Don’t blame me if the rest of the week is quiet.

• TCAF, which just might be the consensus choice for Everybody’s Favorite Con (and it’s free!) announced its slate of guests and exhibitors today, and hoo boy will every other show of 2012 have a hard time matching this lineup. I was going to try to just list out the most notable attendee for each letter for the alphabet, but by the time I hit “B”, I was already confronted with Bá, Beaton, Becan, Bechdel, Brosgol, Brown, and more Brown. Also, there’s nobody listed under “I”, “Q”, “X”, or “Y”.
• Know who else has a name starting with “B”? Rich Burlew. Know what he did today? Upended his storyline, getting rid of a supplementary villain that’s been around for a few hundred updates/coupla years, and recasting The Villain’s Sidekick as The Guy Who’s Been Pulling All The Strings All Along. Burlew’s always been a master of the long game, and he proved it today. If you don’t read The Order of the Stick, you’d have to go back to update #457, or maybe #446 to get the full impact of what he’s been doing; the fact that today’s update is #830 should not deter you in the least.
• You know what else starts with “B”? Cow Boy, at least the second part of it; it’s coming in print this spring from Archaia, but for the moment writer Nate Cosby¹ and artist Chris Eliopolous² have put the first five pages up, and it’s a beaut. It’s got the potential to go really dark, but for now the visual incongruity of a ten-year-old bounty hunter in the Old West is great.
• “B” is also for “backdated”, which is what you’ll find if you take a look at what Jim Zub is doing with Skullkickers. Long story short, there’s now two short stories, a cover gallery, and the start of serialized Swords ‘n’ Sorcery mayhem, rerunning from the beginning of the Image series, five days a week.

  There are precedents to be found in series like Girl Genius, A Distant Soil, and Finder, all established creator-owned works which have engaged in variations of running old stories online to reach a new audience/run new stories online until there’s enough to fill a trade collection. It’s premature to say if Zub is looking towards such a future for Skullkickers, and he’s got twelve full issues in print already (with another 6-issue story due to launch in two months or so) to get through before that decision point gets reached. But others have found it economically preferable to get away from printing floppies, and we may see the same for Baldy and Shorty.

  I would also be remiss if I didn’t note where the Skullkickers reruns are rerunning — not on the main Skullkickers page, but at Keenspot. I may have missed something in the two years or so since the Great Keenspot Realignment, and I don’t recall any new properties being added to the Keen banner in that time that weren’t from creators associated with the Crosby-centric Blatant Comics. A’course, Skullkickers isn’t just any property, it’s got a huge mindshare and a lot of goodwill among those that comment on comics (although how much that translates into actual rent-and-groceries in indy comics is anybody’s guess), so the Keeners would have had to have some pretty good reasons to not want to partner up with Zub.

• One last “B”, although I can’t tell you everything on this one while we wait for Kickstarter to release the details of the project: Benign Kingdom. There will be four 32-page saddle-stitched art books from four creators/creator teams, and a limited-edition hardcover collecting all four. The creators involved are ____ & ______, _____ & _____, ____ ____, and __ _____³ with an assist from the newest challenger for the title of Nexus of all Webcomics and Heck Regular Comics Too Realities, which just means that neither Ryan North nor Shaenon Garrity are involved (as far as I know) since they’re the ones defending the title. Let the guessing begin.

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¹ Not the one with the Jell-O Pudding Pops.

² The one you were thinking of, unless you were thinking of the other Chris Eliopolouos.

³ Full names to be revealed once Kickstarter makes things public.

Despite a lack of support from the White House, and an indefinite shelving in the House, the US Senate is still due to consider Roll Over And Play Nice For The Music And Movie Industries legislation¹ in the immediate future; as a result, tomorrow is set to be a wide-ranging day of protest with many of the internet’s largest sites going dark. One may reasonably conclude that especially geek-related webcomics² may be motivated to do likewise (see how many you can find in this list, which was the most comprehensive I could find).

• In fact, the one webcomicker I’ve found that publicly stated he won’t be going dark (Darren “Dern” Gendron of Hello With Cheese) is only doing so because he can’t reasonably black out his site for 24 of the last 30 hours of his Kickstarter campgain. We at Fleen would be remiss if we didn’t point out that said campaign, for a children’s alphabet primer featuring woo scary monsters is currently at 4260% of goal (no missing decimal, that’s more than 40× the original US$500 goal) and 990 backers with just over two days to go.

  I do not mean to imply that Gendron could easily coast on his Kickstart because he’s obliterated the goal; I want to congratulate him because holy crap that is one monster-sized³ success. Also, future Kickstart campaigns should study what Gendron did very, very closely⁴ because dag, he might actually clear 5000% of goal by the time things are done. Tune in Thursday and we’ll find out together if it happened.

• Pointed out to me by Box “Box” Brown: Study Group, the online presence of Study Group magazine, an “anthology/criticism hybrid”, featuring a pretty substantial webcomics section. I’m still going through all the ongoing stories and one-shots, which come from a wide and impressively talented group (Xeric winner and indy-comics luminary Farel Dalrymple is merely the name most well known to me from the list of contributors).

  In all, it strikes me like a constantly-updating version of what Brown’s doing with his Retrofit Comics, bringing indy creators together under a common banner for the increased mindshare that a single branding can provide. You’re pretty much guaranteed to find something here that you like.

• Finally, it appears that I was not alone in my response to Heidi MacDonald’s annual comics survey, at least with respect to Person of the Year. Kate Beaton had a stellar 2011, and I can only imagine what she does from here on out⁵.

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¹ Also known as the Stop Internet Online Piracy Act (House) and Protect IP Act (Senate). Edited to correct typo.

² That is, all of them.

³ So to speak.

⁴ My guess is it’s driven by the uniqueness of the item in question and the low buy-in point — $US12 — to get a copy of that item.

⁵ I’ve pretty much given up hope that I can ever convince her to sell me the original of either strip #40 or #208, but one never knows. In this case, one never knows when Beaton will draw a comic that I want to own even more than those two.