Those with no problems with evolution but who hold out a cheery view of publishing, you might want to avoid the third bullet.

• A pair of webcomickers whose work I enjoy, whose drafting skills are exquisite, and who coincidentally happen to be housemates, are about to embark on a project that promises the awesomest creatures this side of old Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strips. Evan Dahm (sample critter: here) and Yuko Ota (sample critter: here) will be … let’s let Dahm explain the ground rules:
  

  Beginning with this creature drawn by me, we will take turns drawing future creatures, each one representing a visible step in a theoretical evolutionary process. We’ll play with the aesthetic of living things and the process of natural selection, and may or may not end up with a biologically plausible series of beasts.

  Future evolutionary leaps of The Exquisite Beast will take place on Fridays (Ota) and Tuesdays (Dahm), so be sure to check back tomorrow for what ol’ squidface’s genetic descendant looks like — and no cheating by comparing notes around the breakfast nook, Yuko and Evan! I’ve got my eye on you.

• Just to throw out a number: US$3,512,345. That would be the total monies raised by Child’s Play in 2011, having obliterated what I thought was a stretch of a goal by more than half a million friggin’ dollars. For reference, this kicks the lifetime total for Child’s Play to a (frankly, staggering) US$12,510,909; I’m pretty sure that there are sovereign nations with budgets for child health services that don’t reach that number.
• Found via the twitterfeed of Dylan Meconis, a link to an interview with Ellen Archer, CEO of Hyperion Books¹, wherein she discusses changes in the publishing world (some coming, some already here). The bit that caught my eye starts about three questions from the end, where Archer (who has already floated the idea of the end of advances as we presently know them) is asked by Jeremy Greenfield for an example of changes to the business side of things:
  

  EA: I’ve been looking closely at pre-orders and pre-order strategy and how that aligns with authors that we acquire and publish that have active blog sites and followers.

  We’ve got a number of authors who are really good with social media and when we acquire their books, three months ahead of time, they’ll do something really interesting for their audience, like a cover-reveal, and all of the sudden, you’ll see the pre-orders build. Then you take that information to retailers and that can impact their interest in ordering more copies.

  On the publication date, all of those orders release, and then it gets really quiet and euphoria dissipates because you get these mediocre daily sales for three or four weeks.

  Then sales start growing and building. The core fans buy the book, and then they start talking about it and sharing it with all their friends, and then you begin to see the results of it all paying off.[emphasis added]

  From discussions I’ve had with more than one creator who went from self-publishing to working with a traditional publisher, that expectation that The author will help promote the book has pretty much crossed the line into The author will provide a ready-made audience and do all the promotions and we can just cash the checks. Following up on that answer, Greenfield continued:

  JG: That’s interesting, but what if your author isn’t skilled in that approach?

  EA: That’s going to be a problem. That’s always been a problem.

  If they’re not promotable, then it makes selling their book challenging.

  If the work is extraordinary, it will be discovered, but it will be challenging. You have a much more cluttered marketplace than we did beforehand.

  Also, I will look to acquire media-genic authors and properties. [emphasis added]

  Catch that? There’s a couple different ways to interpret that last sentence. The more generous (based on a reading of an earlier part of the interview) interpretation is You have to have a property that will translate to other media and tie into other product types. Think of the book that can be referenced in the TV show (Disney owns networks, after all), which then shows up as a plush (they own retail stores) and decorate a peripherally-related amusement park ride (Disney owns … aw, you know).

  The less generous interpretation of that last sentence (one which a lifetime of observing media companies, along with a low and suspicious nature, tells me that I cannot ignore) is And you, the author, have to be pretty and have a compelling story of your own; survive horrific circumstances or get a disease that doesn’t show in the face and then we can talk Lifetime Original Movie. Think I’m too cynical? Let’s give it a couple of years and see how many more highly-hyped fake memoirs² make it to the shelves.

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¹ AKA the publishing arm of The Mouse.

² I once saw David Sedaris read a short piece of mostly fiction that featured his lament that The fucked-up alcoholic whose memoir is keeping me from the shelves turned out to have made up the whole thing. Can you believe it? Goddamn fucked-up alcoholic.

Later that night, I fixed the printer driver on his Macbook and he paid me twenty dollars.

Before we get started, I have a pair of time-sensitive reminders. Firstly, Sarra Scherb is still collecting your input as to which webcomics should be included in the digital portion of an exhibition at UW come March, at least for the next two days. You can nominate up to three — I threw my love to the Three Ks of Webcomics: Kate, Karl, and Kmeredith.

Secondly, SPX 2012 registration is now open. The show traditionally fills its vendor space quickly, so don’t delay.

• As mentioned previously, I received in the mail a preview of MoD2¹, which contained the first story from MoD², plus two from the upcoming collection, due this summer. They’re a nice contrast, too — I’m not including the titles because at least one of them will give away a central premise — with one asking the lighthearted question How would the Machine of Death change the field of organized villainy? and the other asking the depressingly serious question If they threw an Apocalypse and nobody came, would anybody notice?

  These two stories were really good, you guys. I mean, imagine you’re a James Bond type supervillain, and the governments of the world stopped sending agents whose deaths were LASER or TANK FULL OF SHARKS or BULLETS; instead they only send agents that will die of THYROID CANCER or ALZHEIMER’S, so now what do you do with your elaborate deathtraps? You get creative, that’s what.

  As MoD editor David Malki ! had a not-insignificant career creating trailers for major motion pictures, and as I know that he hated it when the client’s marketing requirements had him give away all the good material in the trailer, leaving the rest of the movie a disappointment, I have confidence that these two stories are not the only good ones from the book and that the full volume will contain many stories as good or better.

• Hey, funny thing, you know where Colleen AF Venable works? :01 Books. And you know what :01 Books sent me just before Christmas? Review copy of Friends With Boys, collecting the still-running webcomic by Faith Erin Hicks. Put those facts together and you know what it means? I know what the next 50-odd pages of FWB are, and arrrgh I can’t tell you because it’s really well done and I don’t want to spoil you.

  So here’s what I can tell anybody who’s been reading FWB in its free webcomic incarnation³: Hicks has a sure eye for the perils of navigating the waters of adolescence, a sure hand at giving her characters distinctive yet recognizable designs⁴, and an ear for natural dialogue⁵ . Ignore the occasional Canadianisms (most noticeable: Grade 9) and the story could take place in any small town on the eastern coast of North America from Connecticut to New Brunswick. Ignore the ghost that’s silently stalking POV character Maggie and it could be the story of anybody making their way to a new high school for the first time. Some day, the setbacks and victories in these characters lives might look small, but right now they’re the sort of things that stay with you for life.

  Oh, and there’s a drama club musical with zombies, which instantly makes it better than any musical ever put on by my high school.

  I’ve come to accept that :01 can be trusted implicitly to publish works that are worth your time and money. Unless you have an unreasoning hatred of a book list that tilts towards YA material (or, as I prefer to think of it, material that appropriate for the YA audience but crosses over to the A audience just fine, thank you very much), there’s no reason not to follow just about everything that they produce. They’ve become the Pixar of graphic novels, where the vetting has been done and the assurance of quality can be assumed; I’ll even go so far as to say that :01 might actually score higher than Pixar on my “implicit trust” scale, since I don’t believe :01 would ever have released Cars 2.

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¹ Electric Somethingaloo.

² “FLAMING MARSHMALLOW”, read by Colleen AF Venable here.

³ Anybody who hasn’t been reading FWB in its webcomic incarnation, I would encourage you to start because it’s really good.

⁴ For example, Zander and Lloyd look like a pair of teens desperately trying to find hair and clothing choices that will distinguish them, given that they’re not entirely thrilled with being (presumably identical) twins at the moment. Likewise, there’s a family resemblance between Zander and Lloyd, older brother Daniel, younger sister Maggie, and their father.

⁵ Even better, an ear for when dialogue is unnecessary; there’s a lot of quiet time in Friends With Boys

The new year has arrived, and it with it the resumption of news, happenings, and suchlike. Forward.

• The incredible talented hivemind known as Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson¹ have returned from their New Zealand sojourn and hit the ground running. You may have noticed the announcement that TKT will be back to a weekly schedule (with irregular Tigerbuttahs as time allows), following a year of many, many projects. You may have seen the blurb about the soon-to-be-released Yo Gabba Gabba! short, with an animation assist from Meredith Gran². You may have noticed a new blog wherein Dreistadt will paint and Gibson will describe a new creature every MWF until 151 of them have been painted and described, which will form the basis of a gallery show³ (for those wondering if Dreistadt can do 151 paintings in a year, last year she did 240 and in 2012 is aiming for 300).

  Would it surprise you to learn there’s more? Sources tell us that BD&FG have planned to make (or collaborate on) no fewer than four other major projects, which may or may not include:

  • book(s)
  • toy(s)
  • gallery show(s)
  • comic book cover(s)
  • a major motion picture
  • a series of wine bottle labels
  • a livery redesign for QANTAS
  • an animated series
  • sleep amounting to as much as three hours a night⁴

  That’s assuming that sometime during 2012, Disney/PIXAR don’t come to their senses, drive a dumptruck full of money up to BD&FG’s front door, and say, This is a retainer — just draw and write down anything that comes to mind. The Dreistadt/Gibson creative partnership has been steadily building, and this feels like the year where it blows up into a massive, sustained, public-consciousness⁵ success. How is such a thing possible?

• As it turns out, the answer to that question is encoded in the Q & A session that Robert Khoo took some time from his schedule to conduct on Reddit the other day. There’s a ton of questions and answers, but the underlying current comes down to:
  

  How do you do what you do?

  And the answer, essentially, reduces to:

  Work harder than you ever have, longer than you ever have, and better than you ever have. Repeat forever.

  I’d submit that the most important part of that encapsulation is Repeat forever; the death of ambition to grow and improve, the lack of drive to give your audience more/better/more again will come through as indifference, which will be met by the same in your readers. Okay, yeah, sure, you could phone it in for the next couple of decades and still have people clamoring for more, but I have a feeling that’s not the kind of creator you want to be⁶.

  The other bit I pulled from the Khoo & A⁷:

  Where do you think the webcomic business will be in 5 or 10 years?
  Relying on more outside vendors that do business services specifically for independent creators.

  Word of God, folks: the future is TopatoCo.

• Let’s tie it all together with a bit that my buddy Otter wrote today (which I will have to quote here in depth because A Girl And Her Fed — which you really should be reading — doesn’t do permalinks for blogposts):
  

  I have a great life.

  You guys are a huge part of it, too. I like the idea of creating something; I love the idea of creating something that exists for other people. Creating for is, to me, better than simply just creating. My life might be better because of this comic but it is also more difficult — the time I dump into this is like working a second job — and I absolutely would not pursue this if it were just me shouting across the Internet. I am not that selfless a person. [emphasis original]

  For those of you that wish to be part of the “for” group, I would be remiss were I not to point out that the first A Girl And Her Fed book, Rise Up Swearing, is now shipping. As a reminder, I wrote the foreword, but remember the sequence of events — I was thrilled to contribute because I think AGAHF is great⁸, not vice versa.

And that’s 2012 off to a rousing start with my footnote addiction threatening to engulf everything. Let’s do this thing.
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¹ Somebody once tried to condense their names together, celebrity press style, into “Frecky”, about which the less said the better.

² Speaking with both the Gran and BD&FG halves of that equation a few months back, it sounds like a perfect mesh of talents.

³ I will be watching this one very carefully so that those creatures that I particularly like may be identified well in advance of said show, in the (perhaps vain) hope of getting in dibs when it’s time to purchase some art.

⁴ Obviously, some of these are red herrings, meant to throw you off the trail until announcements are made, but here’s a freebie: the sleep thing is an unachievable lie.

⁵ Think “Kate Beaton” for scale.

⁶ In nearly all cases, the only thing that your audience will pay you is their time, so you’ll have to decide if that’s a good way to make rent. But if you can you can find somebody to pay you to create in that manner, more power to you.

I mean that sincerely — ride that train as long and far as you can, as your success costs me nothing. I’ll be giving my time (and money) to creators that I can tell are stretching themselves.

⁷ I’m so sorry.

⁸ Also because Otter has threatened me, but you’ll have to read the book for the whole story.

Basically, everybody¹ has something that they celebrate at this time of year, and it’s likely that I’m the only one reading this because everybody else² is on their way to some gathering or other, possibly one that involves pie.

And booze. Sweet, sweet, drama-erasing and -inducing booze.

So as you make your way to your celebration, let the spirit of webcomics (as manifested in the Holy Trinity of North The Strong, Garrity The Tikiac, and Rohac The Destroyer) accompany you. Stay safe, and see you³ next week.

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¹ And Guigar.

² And Guigar.

³ And that’s about beaten that joke into the ground. What can I say? If there’s one person who appreciates a running gag, it’s Brad⁴.

⁴ Guigar.

Creators heading tither and yon to be with their families and loved ones, updates cued for delivery, newsmaking announcements back-burnered until the new year … just saying, things could get pretty quiet over the next week or so.

• Okay, so the assorted SMBC Enterprises projects are gonna hit 500% of funding goal whenever they put something up for support, but is there anybody that can beat that on a percentage basis? Glad you asked. Allow me to point out that the board book project by Dern and O Abnormal is (as of this writing) sitting at more than 1350% of goal with a mere 29 days to go.

  One might attribute the massive oversuccess to several factors, including (but not limited to):

  • The relatively sparse number of kid-targeted offerings among webcomicker Kickstarts
  • The relative scarcity of independent board books in general (cf: inquiries as to where to find a board book printer)
  • The relatively low point for funding (a mere US$500)
  • The objectively awesome subject of the funding — a kid’s alphabet primer based around monster-type critters, with iambic heptameter rhymes to ease your little replicants to sleep

  In any event, you still have time to get your own copy of The Monster Alphabet for as little as US$12 (which is a bargain for board books, especially considering the wee one will probably try to eat it at the first opportunity).

• Speaking of Kickstarter successes, about 240 people will have to clear space on their bookshelves, as the massive one-volume version of Order of Tales completed its funding round (with a comfortable 50% to spare). Order of Tales creator Evan Dahm will also have to clear some prodigious space in his apartment to store the print run, and hopefully included in his US$12,000 budget some money to hire Strong Men to cart all the boxes around. My back twinges in sympathy for whomever has to move that print run from place to place.
• Still on the Kickstarter front, Kel McDonald’s fairy tale anthology has three weeks and 29% to go to reach full funding. If it keeps up present trends, it ought to clear goal with a bit of a cushion, but don’t let it get caught in the end-of-year rush — hardback copy of a 200 page book from comics superstars, for delivery in March? This is a woman who has her publishing plan together, and in a creative field that regularly blows deadlines and pays creators late, that is sufficient reason by itself to lend support.
• Finally, today marks the 500th update for Octopus Pie. That’s 1682 days, or less than four days between updates, all of which were full pages, showed ever-growing artistic and storytelling mastery, and some of which were goddamn masterpieces. Meredith, you keep getting better and better, and it almost hurts me to think how good your work will be in another 500 updates. Brava.

Also, a few things that are Not Books.

• Books: Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya do one of my favorite webcomics (to the point that I know how to spell “Panagariya” without looking it up), and they were kind enough to send me a copy of Johnny Wander vol 2: Escape to New York, for which I was pleased to provide a blurb (it involved Archie). Let’s see if I can repay their kindness with another well-chosen phrase for volume 3, whenever that may come out.

  What struck me on my reading (and re-reading) of EtNY was its sense of generosity; this is, after all, an autobio strip, and one might well assume that the focus would be on Panagariya and Ota to the point that the rest of the city becomes a mere setting for them to live out their lives, and people that they encounter to be bit players and extras. Far from it, though, as they’ve gone out of their way to share the spotlight, even to minimize their own presence in the story of their lives, and let their cast of friends and co-conspirators have their chances to shine. Many of the best strips feature John, Aaron, Evan or George¹.

  Ultimately it’s about capturing the moment and whoever that may entail (I have had this epiphany at the AMNH, as well as by the Q. northropi, the A. excelsus, and especially the T. rex), and nobody recognizes that moment, nobody captures its essence, in quiet and in enthusiasm like Yuko and Ananth. Also, there are adorable critters, and Garies. So many Garies.

• Books: If you haven’t seen it yet, the new collection of comics inspired by Jim Henson’s The Storyteller is quite good. It might be my webcomicky preferences showing, but I most liked the story by Chris Eliopolous and Mike Maihack (inverting the normal order of things as the Storyteller’s dog — who is named Dog — tells an old Romanian tale of why dogs and cats and mice dislike each other, making more sense than a more modern version where it just don’t add up); the Aesop story by Colleen Coover; and a Japanese tale by Katie Cook. In fact, of the nine stories in the book, three were from China and Japan, and one from Appalachia, which marks a welcome broadening of the basis of the tales (entirely European in the first Storyteller series, and obviously Greek for the Greek Myths sequel series). Terrific work, start to finish.
• Books: End of the year, time to confirm or recant my strong words regarding Anya’s Ghost back in April:
  

  It is 224 pages long, was written and drawn by Vera Brosgol, and is the best comics work of 2011.

  From the perspective of time, I stand by my opinion. I will draw an arbitrary line between the “comics” of Anya’s Ghost and the “cartoons” of Hark! A Vagrant, and say that Vera Brosgol’s story of a moody teen learning uncomfortable truths was the best comic story of 2011. That is all.

• Not Books: In contravention of conventional wisdom, there’s a comment thread on the internet that’s useful and reasonably polite. Well, until the end when it goes off the rails a little, but I’d like to commend to your attention a back-and-forth from Friday’s posting between Ben (no last name given) and Scott Kurtz, which starts here. In particular, I’d commend this part of the discussion, from Mr Kurtz:
  

  [W]hat’s not known is that I’ve already approached some syndicates about consulting the “proper way” and got told that they really, by policy don’t hire consultants.

  I agree that the way it was presented was out there and a little crazy, but at this point, It’s the best way to target the “crazy” person at any of these syndicates that’s willing to buck the system and say “fuck he’s right.”

  So it’s not like we didn’t try other ways first.

  Cross-reference the criticisms of Kurtz² for not going about things properly, say, here. In all sincerity, I ask those that took issue with “how Kurtz³ said it” if this revelation changes their minds. Answers, as usual, on a postcard, and let’s try to keep things polite?

• Not Books: Randy Milholland reached a milestone yesterday, having spent ten years drawing comics of horrible, dysfunctional people (although I really like Fred and consider him a much less horrible person than most of the cast, despite having more than his share of sorrow). But, and this is a thing I’ve noted about Milholland’s work, a thing that I think he does better than anybody else in webcomics, his horrible dysfunctional people are trying.

  At the same time they wallow in their respective psychoses, they’re trying to be there for each other, trying to be better people (even when they don’t admit it), and it’s why I regard S*P (which is so deeply wrong and cynical and vicious on the surface) to be innately hopeful and optimistic. Milholland may not always ‘fess up to all of the sweetness and sincerity he’s capable of (particularly because he seems to have a higher-than-normal quotient of humorless, angry, rage-quit inclined readers), but it’s there all the same.

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¹ Especially George; you might try to convince me that John has the punchline, but it’s all about the vibe that George is projecting. His simple, iconic, almost hermaic representation will follow him all the days of his life and beyond.

² And Guigar! Let’s not leave him out of the equation. Poor Brad, always laboring in the shadows … like a ninja poised to strike.

³ And Guigar, ibid.

I think it says something (not sure what exactly, but something for sure) that I did a Google search on cavortment to make sure I got the Zappa quote right, and the first hit was a four and a half year old post from this very blog. Another man might take this as a sign that he needed to not throw so many semi-oblique references to Thing-Fish into his writing, but I am not that man. Onwards to the void.

• Uplift: One may have noticed a comic that Tony Piro did about a year ago that homages a familiar scene to make a point about religion and such. This particular cartoon has been appropriated numerous times by people that don’t understand the difference between Draw something that references Sparky while making my own point and Just erase Piro’s name and pretend I did it. Piro himself has come to accept that there’s no point in trying to police jerks:
  

  It’s probably one of the best received things I’ve ever drawn. But its success has also resulted in many people altering it for their own purposes, erasing my URL and replacing it with their own, and ruining what I think was originally a positive statement.

  I could attempt to police these copies, but ultimately this is impossible to do on the internet, especially once images start spreading on social sites like Facebook.

  But there is an upside:

  Even if I cannot eliminate these other copies, together we can drown them out by spreading a superior message.

  Please help me by sharing this comic anyway you can. Post it to your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook page, or even email it to friends and family. In keeping with the spirit of the season, for every 500 page views the comic gets between now and the end of the year, I will donate $1 to Doctors Without Borders. Thank you for your continued support!

  Spreading an original to drown out inferior shadows, and supporting a worthy charity at the same time? It’s a deal.

• Frolic: Today is the second (pre-zumnably¹ annual) Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, so get out there and make some friends, dammit. One place you might be sure to make those friends is at the Dinosaur Comics Combo-Platter Book Launch/Holiday Party at Pauper’s Pub in Toronto. Word has it that Ryan North² has a brother who is a professional brewer and he will be bringing special beers so you really want to be there.
• Cavortment: We at Fleen have run many a story tying to San Fransisco’s Cartoon Art Museum and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, but never have we had cause to bring both into a single story until now. In approximately six hours, Pittsburgh and San Fransisco will meet in some kind of Monday Night Sportball contest³, and the respective honchos of CAM and TS (Andrew Farago and Joe Wos); have tied their sacred honor to whichever team manages to do the most points:
  

  As the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers face off on the football field, the cities’ cartoon museums are getting in on the gridiron action too. The San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum’s Curator Andrew Farago and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum Director Joe Wos have issued a friendly wager based on the outcome of the December 19th Monday night game. The losing team’s fan will visit the other city’s museum and conduct a cartooning workshop while wearing the opposing team’s jersey. Will Joe Wos don Joe Montana’s colors? Will Farago suit up like Franco?

  Andrew Farago, author of the The Looney Tunes Treasury and curator of the San Francisco-based Cartoon Art Museum has outlined specific directions that he will only wear a classic 1970s Steelers jersey in the event of a 49ers loss. Joe Wos, director of the ToonSeum, has not outlined any specific jersey requirements as up until the bet he hadn’t realized San Francisco even had a football team.

  Okay! Smack talk between cartoon nerds! I think we can all agree, whoever wins in this contest⁴, I think we can all agree that the loser is just begging for a wedgie.

Editor’s note: I was going to have something here about Howard “Evil Twin” Tayler’s amazing Kickstarter campaign for the Schlock Mercenary boardgame — #2 slot for boardgames in Kickstarter history, over US$82,000 raised on a goal of US$25,000, having to come up with new over-goal rewards, etc., but unfortunately I just couldn’t make it fit in the three-part theme for today’s post. So I didn’t bring it up. Sorry, Howard.

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¹ Prologue, Zappa, Willis⁵, et. al.

² He’s dreamy.

³ Possibly foobaw.

⁴ Which may involve a place called The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field, which sounds like there should be some Nazgûl guarding it.

⁵ Ike, not David.

There’s certain things that make you feel good, like being solicited for your opinion on the year in comics by Heidi Mac or having The Spurge say something nice about something you wrote. No resting on laurels, though — got to keep moving forward.

• If I were interested in saving significant figures for some other purpose, I’d point out that 1.95 is practically 2.0, and therefore 1.95 million is almost exactly the same as 2.0 million. Which, if expressed in US dollars, is the amount raised by Child’s Play 2011 to date, making the US$2 million threshold pretty much a mathematical certainty. Heck, a full US$351,000 was raised on Monday night alone via the annual charity dinner/auction; there’s still some distance to go to continue the Child’s Play tradition of raising more every year, and since 2010 brought in US$2.29 million, I’m thinking that US$2.5 million makes for a nice, round number to shoot for. There’s still two weeks to go, so get to it.
• Lot of talk about comics going day-and-date with electronic publishing, but from what I gather the big publishers aren’t doing much to get their enormous back catalogs (especially out-of-print material) into the Kindles and Nooks of the world, or at least not at a realistic price point. Enter Howard Tayler, who’s put the first four Schlock Mercenary books into e-form. Further, it seems he’s wrangled a deal where he doesn’t have to host the transfers, as they’re being sold through the Baen e-books storefront (cf: our discussion yesterday about deciding what it’s better to get somebody else to do, without giving up ownership).

  I’m sure you’ve seen the same analyses of digital pricing I have, how publishers are leaving money on the table by not providing a compelling economic reason to go digital, and it seems that Tayler read them too. The first two SM volumes cost US$25 each in print, and vols 3 & 4 US$15 each or US$20 for the pair. E-version costs:

  • Volume 1: US$16
  • Volume 2: US$16
  • Volume 3: US$9
  • Volume 4: US$9
  • Four book bundle: US$45

  That’s a discount of 36% to 40% for single books or the four book bundle (the already-discounted two-book deal “only” gets a 10% further discount in digital). That’s how you do it.

• You guys remember when I teased you that there was something potentially very cool on the horizon that I’d been invited to participate in? Look, just pretend you remember, it was only two weeks ago. In any event, said PVCT is now definitely happening (barring unfortunate world-ending disasters or me walking in front of a bus). That’ll have to do on details until the middle of February or so.

At this point, if there’s some kind of award or “Best Of” list that could conceivably be stretched to include humor, literature, cartoons, or Canadians, assume that Kate Beaton is on it. In the latest iteration, Hark! A Vagrant comes in as #7 on the Time magazine Top Ten Fiction Books of 2011 list. In the words of presenter (noted author and general webcomics appreciator) Lev Grossman:

It’s tough to say what list this book belongs on, but it’s the debut of a smart, funny, wholly unique voice, and it ought to be somewhere, so let’s put it here…. Whatever else it might be, Hark! A Vagrant is the wittiest book of the year.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

And within the past half-hour the one-fourth of the Cyanide & Happiness crüe known as Rob¹ tweeted a link² that informs us that Comedy Central has a C&H project in development:

From the creators of the Cyanide and Happiness web comics and shorts comes a half-hour animated show featuring the twisted humor of a world populated by glorified stick figures. Executive produced and created by Kristipher Matthew Wilson, Robert Andrew DenBleyker, David McElfatrick and Matthew Melvin.

I’m smelling back-to-back programming with South Park. Oh, and I hope whoever it was at ICE that initially decided that C&H co-creator Dave McElfatrick didn’t need to be admitted to the US has finally come to learn the error of his or her³ ways. Dave, Kris, Matt, and Rob may have a long road ahead of them before things actually make it to air, but since they have a habit of knuckling down, doing their work, and bringing the funny on a daily basis, I’d say the odds are in their favor.

Congrats to everybody at Explosm Amalgamated Laugh-Chuckles, and note that the time until the Family Research Council [no link ’cause screw those guys] issues its first my-stars-and-garters we’re shocked, shocked I say! press release decrying the C&H show as causing the the utter downfall of Western Civilization begins now.

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¹ Mr DenBleyker if you’re nasty.

² Also, one should note that DenBleyker got scooped on his own announcement, as comics reporting supastar Heidi MacDonald tweeted the news a full half-hour earlier and had a news posting up even before then. I don’t know how she does it, but some day I have to learn her secret powers.

³ Fine, fine … thon ways. Happy now, Ryan North?

Having mentioned this year’s iteration of the Wondermark Calendar last week, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a new twist that David Malki ! is introducing for 2012. Namely, custom holidays.

“Custom” might actually be too strong a word; it’s not like every purchaser is going to get their own combination of unique holidays on the calendar cards. But he is soliciting for suggestions of new holidays to be enshrined for the next twelvemonth:

[Suggested holidays] should:

• Be short
• Be funny
• Include a brief explanation that I’ll archive here on the site for people to consult throughout the year.

EXAMPLE:

January 5, Poop-on-Cats-Day. This is when everybody gets back at their cats by holding them down and pooping on them. Traditionally followed by January 6, Wash-Your-Cats-Day, and January 7, Hospital Day.

Suggestions from the field include, as of this writing,

July 20: The Feast of St. Owens. In honour of Richard Owens, coiner of the term ‘Dinosaur’, every young child is encouraged to carry a small replica of a Dinosaur with them at all times. The feast is concluded in the traditional manner of Owens himself –- scooping out your enemy’s spine and keeping it in a jar in your office.

June 12: Death by Tentacles Day. In memoriam of all the intrepid sailors, airship captains, sailboats and Japanese anime girls viciously violated and slain by oversized octupi, mutant cuttlefish and alien cephalopod-like creatures.

Also, nice try person who suggested 30 July as Defenestration Day, but if you’re going to use it to commemorate the date of the First Defenestration of Prague¹, what about the Second Defenestration of Prague², which took place on 23 May? Or even the One-and-a-Halfth on 24 September³? I suggest a compromise, equidistant between the Spring and Autumn Defenestrations, which would be 24 July; this has the added bonus of likely falling during San Diego Comic Con most years, allowing a mechanism to thin the crowds a bit for at least one day.

• New Johnny Wander book! Volume 2 is now available for your ordering pleasure, although to make delivery before Christmas exponentially more likely, personalizations will not be offered at this time. Buy a copy and bring it to the Yuko half of Yuko-and-Ananth at a con! Or wait until January! In the interests of full disclosure, one must note that a certain hack webcomics pseudojournalist was asked to provide a back cover blurb and did so.
• Tangentially webcomics: anybody out there reading Drops of God? Is it just me, or does plucky heroine Miyabi Shinohara somewhat resemble an all-grown-up Kat Donlan? And is this just an excuse for me to mention that holy crap, Gunnerkrigg Court has been killing it this week? Yes, yes it is.
• Continuing through much of this morning, Jim Zubkavich has been relating the story on Twitter of a Russian comics pirate that emailed him to ask if it would be possible to get unlettered copies of the Skullkickers art, so that he (the pirate) could translate them into Russian and release them to sharing sites more easily.

  I’ll wait while you digest that.

  A back and forth with Cameron Stewart and Indigo Kelleigh ensued on the merits of cooperating with this situation. There’s no Russian-language version of Skullkickers, nor plans to make one; there’s no legal means for this guy to obtain the comics in Russian; they’re already torrented and that will continue regardless of what Zub decides.

  On the other hand, this may create an easement or set a precedent for bad situations down the line. Honestly, just go follow the whole thread because it’s fascinating, and a conversation that is likely to come up more frequently in the future. And then take a look at Chip Zdarsky’s proposed solution:

  @Zubkavich @cameronmstewart I would fly to Russia and shoot him a lot and say “permission granted.”

  And with that, have a good weekend.

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¹ 1419 CE, precipitating the Hussite Wars.

² 1618 CE, precipitating the Thirty Years’ War.

³ 1483 CE, not precipitating any particular war.