Today I am stuck at the mercy of people with no sense of “agreed upon starting time”. On the one hand, there is very little that’s more guaranteed to annoy me than wasting my precious few remaining heartbeats because you can’t be bothered to show up. On the other hand, I have network access and webcomics willing to entertain me. What wonders might quell my murderous rage?

• There’s an excellent appreciation of everybody’s favorite character-driven webcomic, Octopus Pie (by everybody’s favorite Brooklynian, Meredith Gran) over at Comics Alliance today; Lauren Davis (seen spreading comicky wisdoms in places both high and low) is closer to Gran’s age cohort than I am, and has some insights that have always escaped me in my readings of OctoPie. I love finding a completely new perspective on something I’ve followed for a long time; given that Gran’s been releasing Eve and Hanna’s stories for more than four and a half years, finding new nuances is a real thrill.
• Readers of this page know that if there’s one thing I adore with all my heart, it’s The Abominable Charles Christopher; Karl Kerschl has poured all of his considerable skill into his epic tale of a silent ape-man for four and a half years. With Chapter Two just finished, Kerschl’s busy deciding precisely which heart-strings to tug and funny bones to tickle among his audience, and he’s filling the time with guest strips. He could scarcely have gotten a better launch strip for Guest Times than yesterday’s marvel from Yuko-and-Ananth¹, taking us back to our favorite woodland shrink for a rousing game of Dungeons and Nonviolent Interpersonal Conflict Resolution.
• Visual sighting and pre- (pre-?) order announcement on the long-awaited Choo-Choo Bear plush from the mind of Randy Milholland and the business empire of the unsighted mustelid. It’ll probably be some time next week before the (pre-?) orders go live, but more than likely they will be somewhere in the vicinity of here². From Milholland’s Tumblennouncement of the plush’s imminence:
  

  I am really, really excited right now. I’ve wanted a Choo-Choo plush to exist for about four, five years.

  Huh. That’s about … four and a half years?

• Perhaps filled with great resolve after yesterday’s Boxing Day panorama of Brownness, Box Brown announced availability of the first collected volume of Everything Dies. Given that not all of the individual ED issues are still available, and that those that are will run you $5 for 32 — 48 pages of story, the $17 that The Great Disappointment will set you back for more than 200 pages may just qualify it as the bargain of the year. Heck, this collection of beginner’s eschatology³ might be the bargain of the past four and a half years.

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¹ Notionally two separate people, but many who have met “them” in person will swear that they are in fact one hive mind, so cleanly integrated are their artistic sensibilities.

² Countdown to the first person to do something rude with a Choo-Choo Bear plush and a McPedro plush starts … now.

³ Look it up.

Got invited to be part of something potentially very cool in the 2012 timeframe; can’t wait to see how it might come to fruition. In the meantime, we have a plethora of wondrous things to share today.

• Not webcomics, don’t care — you can now get a print of John Hodgman, Deranged Millionaire and occasional arbiter of disputes. I am bringing this to your attention because it lets me share the fun fact that I played a small part in Hodgman’s efforts to obtain the ferret skeleton in that video. The dead animal supply company I pointed him towards supplied the ferret skeleton in the Ferret Skeleton Room¹. This print is officially Today’s Coolest Thing.
• No, wait, this is: the new Ryan North-penned Adventure Time comic (referenced here) will have one of the covers for its premiere issue done by Becky Dreistadt of Tiny Kitten Teeth. It’s actually become a bit of a misnomer to describe Becky as “of Tiny Kitten Teeth”, as her schedule is increasingly filled with other projects. On the one hand, less TKT and Tigerbuttah; on the other hand, she’s becoming in-demand for her prodigious skills, and it’s just a matter of time before she’s snapped up by some channel or other and put in charge of a string of highly successful animation projects. As much as we in webcomicdom know and love her work, her career is just now starting and I couldn’t be more thrilled for all of her future fame and renown.
• No, wait, maybe this is: just about four weeks in, Child’s Play ’11 is up over the US$1 million mark, which puts the collective effort since 2003 at over $US10 million. And there’s still most of a month and the always massively productive charity dinner/auction to go. Those numbers boggle the mind and humble me; I’m proud to have been a tiny fraction of that effort each year.

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¹ Hooray for helping.

So you’ve got Post-Thankful Fatigue Syndrome? Welling up with all the rage that only a holiday-season trip to the vicinity of The Mall can instill? Just be glad that you’ve got it easier that Arthur, King of Time and Space creator Paul Gadzikowski, who had cause to tweet in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day:

In the hospital with a heart attack. Not gonna die. More later.

Gadzikowski was able to provide more information about ten hours later, and as these things go, it turned out about as well as could be hoped for:

Had a heart attack Wednesday night. Caught it fast so effects are minimal, but it’s still a lifechanger.

Looks like I’m getting sprung from here today [Friday 25 Nov]. Not going back to work till December 5 at the earliest.

Being a webcomicker, Gadzikowski had his eye on the important priorities:

One thing this spate of adversity has taught me: keep your webcomic on a buffer.

The uncharitable might note that AKOTAS has been on a sketch-based story hiatus since the vicinity of the summer solstice, but look at that archive: updates every damn day, up to and after the infarction. I call that dedication and we at Fleen salute Gadzikowski and wish him a speedy return to normal life.

Let’s consider some things that would melt the icy displeasure of even the most PTFS-afflicated among us:

• Rosemary Mosco, who put a lot of her comicking on hold while she went to grad school, got married, little things like that, has put together an awesome print of birdsong mnemonics; hang next to her love letter to turkey vultures and her paleological/alphabetical primer. And, because today is Cyber Monday, don’t forget the TopatoCo secret cybercode.
• Continuing their trend of being supportive with cold, hard cash, the SMBC Theater Superpals have cleared the pre-order hurdle for SMBC DVD 2¹ in two days. As these are the same fans that utterly obliterated the Kickstarter goal for the new space-themed webseries, it shouldn’t be surprising that they collectively came up with two grand in a couple of days, but this was during the Thanksgiving Day craziness, with the family, and the traveling, and the pie-induced coma. So, well done, Superpals.
• Speaking of Kickstarterings launched over the Thanksgiving weekend (when nobody’s paying attention, so perhaps this slipped by you): Audra Ann Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga did so to launch their latest nemu*nemu collection in perfect-bound full color. This one has gotten off to a slow start, which can only be explained by the general away-from-the-internet tendencies of the long weekend. Think of this book as not only entertainment, but a vaccination against dangerously infective cuteness.

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¹ Electric Jamesaloo.

Following up from yesterday — you can see the full Q interview with Kate Beaton at the CBC’s website. It’s really good.

• I was wondering why xkcd was late in posting yesterday — Randall Munroe was off on one of his enormous ass-images, this one explaining money. Seriously, almost everything you wanted to know about money, debt, taxes, expenditures is in one zoomable image¹. To make it easier to consider, said ass-image is in the xkcd store as a poster — or even better, as four posters that can be tiled together.

  This might be the most useful and informative image that Monroe’s ever done, even moreso than the radiation dose chart. Go spend an hour staring into the strange world of money, spend another two hours learning about The Giant Pool of Money, and you’ll be better informed than almost everybody you know².

• At the far opposite end of the spectrum from the Enormous Ass-Piles of Money, you have individual creators making things out of their brains and — to varying degrees — with their own hands. From David Malki ! (taking a rare moment of respite from all of his Machine of Death project-noodling) comes the latest iteration of the Wondermark calendar.

  It’s screenprinted by hand on lovely, thick paper and really reminds you what the product of limited-run, artisinal effort is like. I almost missed out on last year’s offering, but Malki ! emailed me personally to let me know he’d hold one against my order in case I’d overlooked it (which I had). NO such danger this year — my order’s already in.

• Not quite so done-directly-by-the-artist, but just as authentic an expression of individual vision: Evan Dahm is Kickstartering the one-volume edition of Order of Tales; he’s more than 35% along in his 30 day campaign since yesterday, so it’s a pretty sure thing that he’s going to make goal (with massive over-goal achievement meaning that many more copies of a really big book underfoot at Dahm’s apartment until they can get mailed out).

  The only variable is how many people will indicate that they definitely want the hardcover super-duper edition of OoT as opposed to the softcover merely-duper edition. My guess is that both editions will feature the promised foreword by living comics legend (and guy who knows about one-volume editions) Jeff Smith.

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¹ Okay, fine, he doesn’t go into the technical definitions of types of money like M1 and M2, but unless you’re my sophomore-year mandatory economics class, you probably don’t care.

² You’ll probably also change at least one of your cherished opinions along the way.

Our Canadian friends (aka the Politest Conquerors) took care of Thanksgiving six weeks ago, on a Monday, and then got back to work. We from Down South will eat ourselves into a coma and take off Friday. What difference could one day’s productivity make?

• Answer #1: You could get to meet Mister The Frog, like Kate Beaton did. All those who are blind envious may now raise their hands or flippers or whatever. Me, I’m not, because me ‘n’ Kermit, we hang out all the time. In fact, here he is just chillin’ with my dog. Yep, totally not incredibly envious after watching the full-length interview (presumably, a full interview with Beaton will be posted soon).
• Answer #2: You could get to write the comic book adaptation of Adventure Time as Ryan North is apparently doing now. Again, not blind envious that North chose to share the news first with Comics Alliance on account of the fact that I am, to date, the sole comics-related sort-of journalist who’s been given the full scoop on the secret code embedded into his Dinosaur Comics books. Yep, no problems here.

  Additionally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that one of the artists on the Adventure Time comic will be Braden Lamb, artist of the unfortunately-hiatused Kitty Hawk, which I hell of enjoyed back when it was still updating. I think Finn and Jake (and dare I hope, Fionna and Cake?) are in good hands.

• Anniversary time! As far as I know, Randy Milholland is not Canadian¹ despite his thorough documentation of Canada’s most dangerous wildlife. He has, on the other hand, been at this webcomics game for a long time, having passed the ten year mark and who knows how many comics²this past weekend.

  It’s been a long time since he lobbed an abortion joke in his very first strip, but nobody can say that Milholland wasn’t in it for the long haul. Per the blogposting on today’s update, as early as the first appearance of Choo-Choo Bear, scarcely a month into Something*Positive’s run, he was planning out what to do with the pudding cat in Year Five.

  Also, nobody can dispute that Milholland is the master of finding ways to let characters (even the most unlikeable) be complete people, none of them entirely perfect (ha!) or despicable, and allowing them to mature and change in organic, realistic ways. For all the grumptacular facade he puts up, he, more than any other webcomics creator³, understands the possibilities of redemption and wanting to grow as a person, no matter how hard it is at times (or how easy it is to put up barriers and walls).

  Even given all the bluster and dickery and awfulness that Milholland’s cast unleashes on each other, they all aspire on some level to be better. The name of the strip may have been intended as awful and cynical and ironic, but it’s become something that one can read and find legitimately optimistic. Bravo, and happy stripaversary, beardy-man.

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¹ One could argue that, being a Texan, Milholland is genetically predisposed towards the opposite of Canadianess. However, I can state from personal experience that he doesn’t fit the stereotypical mold of Texaness either, so perhaps he’s got some recessive Canadian genes.

² I could count the number of updates on his various archive pages, but aside from the question as to whether or not to count his side projects like New Gold Dream or Midnight Macabre, there’s a hell of a lot of them and thus I’m not going to. Deal.

³ Possible exception: Tatsuya Ishida.

Yeah, so the Washington Post is doing that “Best Webcomic” poll thingy again (cf: last year’s version). I remain deeply ambivalent because it’s asking for categorization based on physical format — webcomic, comic strip (presumably newspaper, although most webcomics are strips), “graphical narratives” (I think that means graphic novels, or maybe comic books?) and animated film. So because of choice of distribution medium, webcomics are all comparable?

Think about this for a moment: comparing (say) Bucko against Family Man (which are produced in the same room, from adjacent drawing tables) makes about as much sense as comparing (say) Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show Comic Book against Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose¹ because they’re both printed in color with floppy covers and staples up the middle.

So webcomics are all webcomics? Fine. I’m nominating Oglaf, SS Myra, and Get Fucked²; at least they’re more comparable than other comics would be to each other. Let’s see if WaPo acknowleges ’em.

• Speaking of Charles Christopher³, a double-size update dropped, along with this note:
  

  See you next week, for the exciting conclusion of Chapter 2!
  -karl

  Given that a chapter means the possibility of a new book, I’m all excited. Oh, heck, I was already excited because Luga showed up again last week, bringing to an end my worry and fretting of more than a month. The wheels of Luga’s justice may grind slowly, but I think in the end both the Chief and Sissi Skunk will have cause to regret their misdeeds.

• Following up from yesterday — the Bradster and the G-Man have revealed their collaboration at the ECCC site, in the form of a weekly gag strip about comic convention goings-on, out front on the floor, in the planning and backstage process, and the inevitable bar circuit. More from Guigar at his blog, but for me the most telling part was his explanation about a key piece of logic — this strip, if done well, will give people a reason to come back to the ECCC website all year round, and not just when they’re specifically gearing up to attend.

  The next EmCity Con isn’t until the end of March, and possibly only the hardest core of attendees are paying much attention to the daily announcements this far out … until now? That’s a lot to ask of a new webcomic, even from two established creators with built-in audiences, but it’s going to be one hell of an interesting experiment, one that I think will be repeated elsewhere in the coming years.

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¹ In the former case, the comic made me laugh; in the latter, the reviews.

² If I felt like doing more than just making a point, I’d have to go with Vattu, The Abmoninable Charles Christopher, and Octopus Pie, which are all character-driven, chapter-oriented, longform stories, and absolutely killing it, each update.

³ I was so, right there, in footnote #2; you think I write these for my amusement? Well, that’s where you’re right.

Seriously, I marveled at each of these things.

• For starters, can I give some props¹ to Danielle Corsetto? Every 200 strips, like friggin’ clockwork, she cranks out a book. Unlike most print comics, “waiting for the trade” doesn’t involve kicking around for half a year or more before the book becomes available — strip number that’s a multiple of 200 goes up, 10 or so weeks later the book’s solicited². Not only that, but the magic $20 price point is preserved, despite the fact that this book (volume 6, for those of you keeping score) is full color, where previous volumes were black & white.

  Operators are standing by (or would be, if the internet hadn’t destroyed all those operator jobs) to take your orders now. For future reference, this ups my current “must buy” list to … nine items from eight creators. Stop creating things, guys.

• Speaking of black and white becoming color: years ago, before the gag became played out, Greg Dean wondered if making a comic would be a cool thing to do. Twelve years, one marriage, and one offspring later he has his answer: yeah, pretty much. Long time for the internet, twelve years. Long damn time.
• The Machine of Deathiversary may have passed a few weeks back, but the official celebration for MoD turning a year old will take place the day after tomorrow with a blowout party in Los Angeles; with the acceptances for MoD2³ having gone out recently, the MoD Squad are undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief that that particular enormous job is behind them (nearly 2000 submissions and literally millions of words had to be combed through).

  As an extra incentive for those unsure if an evening of uplifting frolic and cavortment are what you had in mind for Thursday, consider this: in addition to fun, in addition to a magic show, there will be fabulous prizes which you could possibly win … if you bring a nonperishable unit of food for the MoD Food Drive. Just … if your MoD card reads ANAPHYLAXIS, maybe you don’t bring a jar of peanut butter?

• Last thoughts: Shelly Winters, absent from public view for more than two years, is not only back in a new adventure, she’s brought along my favorite almost-teen adventure-having schoolgirl, Charlotte. The next eight weeks are going to be magic.

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¹ That’s what you kids say these days, right?

² The pedantic amongst you may note that this collection’s last strip was produced in July. However, note that Corsetto was involved in a store & hosting migration and site redesign in August, which explains the uncharacteristic delay.

³ Electric Deathaloo.

Holy cats, the network is slow today. Granted, I’ve been in various locales for work for the past couple of weeks that had unusually fast network speeds, but this is just painful. I’ll just assume it’s to make up for the fact that it’s a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day for November in New York City, which presumably means the End Times are just around the corner because everybody knows that November is supposed to be pretty dank and miserable. Interesting times, my friends.

• Hopefully, when Ragnarök hits, we’ll all at least have a good idea what the most polite way to steal dwindling foodstocks from our neighbors might be, as Holly Post and Sara McHenry’s new podcast will be able to tell us. With less than a day to go, A Nerd Of Advice slipped over the line and reached its fundraising goal yesterday, ensuring that I’ll be able to leave tasteful thank-you cards on the graves of my enemies in the depths of the fimbulvetr. Well done, Sara and Holly!
• Speaking of Kickstarting, there’s another project to commend to you that launched over the weekend. Kel McDonald is putting together a comics anthology devoted to fairy tales, and if you’ve ever read this page before, you know I loves me some fairy tales. If nothing else, look at that lineup of talent that McDonald’s got arranged, revel in the fact that the chief purpose of this anthology’s fundraising is to pay the contributors, and consider that most of the creators are already putting finishing touches on their efforts. This is not gonna be a project that finishes far off in limbo, and it’s going to be pretty.
• Eventually I’m going to get to the point where the Sunday annotation of David Morgan-Mar¹ has been recommended to you so many times that you just click over there without me telling you it’s worth your time. Monday will come, you’ll be reading Fleen, and like Pavlov’s dog you will automatically click over to Irregular Webcomic².

  This time, it’s advice for anybody that’s ever asked him how to make a webcomic, and it strikes me as significant that a pretty damn successful webcomicker who never had any intention of making money (to the point that there’s not even advertising to offset hosting costs at IW) has largely the same advice that you’d get from somebody who’s made the webcomic his job.

  Apart from the technical advice, Morgan-Mar produces three most-important ideas:

  1. Don’t start a webcomic expecting to make any money. Do it because you want to make comics and will do it even if it takes you time and effort for no reward whatsoever.
  2. More importantly, don’t expect everyone to love your work.
  3. [M]ost importantly of all, decide how often you are going to update your comic and stick to your advertised update schedule. [emphasis original]

  I can’t disagree with any of them.

• I also imagine some day Kate Beaton will stop being noticed by significant media; today’s noticer: The frickin’ Economist, newsweekly of record for the most important people in the world. Yikes.

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¹ PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.

² Or drooling; presumably the drool will cause a short in your keyboard that brings up the IW page.

I kid, I kid. But surely I’m not the only one that thinks it’s just a matter of time before Kate Beaton becomes the subject of one of those Canadian Heritage minutes?

• Because I happened to be reading his blog, and double-happened to find a link to his old blog, and triple-happened to find his post noting ten years as a web com artist was dated exactly one year ago — happy eleventh anniversary of web com artistry, Kris Straub.

  As long as we’re noting anniversaries, today would be the anniversary of the birth of one of the most talented, funniest, and all-around greatest web com artists, Meredith Gran. Want to know how to succeed in this business? Do like Meredith does and spend 40% of your life honing your craft before you leave your mid-20s. That ought to do it.

• Readers of this page may know that I have great affection for the web com artisting of one Ms K Brooke “Otter” Spangler, creator of A Girl And Her Fed. She takes her time with her story, asks some pretty deep questions, isn’t afraid to revisit plot points from half-a-thousand updates previous, and easily takes the Most Improved Art award¹. But I wanted to mention something that she doesn’t get recognized for so often — her prose. Want to get a feel for how razor sharp her writing is? Check out her expose of how department store cosmetics counter reps deal with competition².

  People that write for comics don’t usually spend words as freely as they might like — the limited real estate afforded to speech balloons and fear of the dreaded Wall O’ Text Syndrome dictate economy as the general rule. As a result, most of them don’t really get the chance to stretch their verbal muscles too often, and thus might not be very skilled at it (a notable exception: Rob Balder, who has gotten a lot of practice with his Erfworld text updates, and is in the midst of a months-long page-at-a-time story; in print, Terry Moore used the technique to great effect in Strangers In Paradise).

  I’m mentioning this because Spangler was kind enough to send me a complementary copy of a new, brief, prose-dominant PDF of bonus stories, giving some color and definition to a pair of her minor characters (only seen in a handful pages in the past 10% or so of the story). The thing is, you don’t need to know very much about the (fairly complex) backstory of AGAHF³ to appreciate Issues (for that is its name) and what it reveals about Mare and Rachel (for they are the subjects).

  What you get is a compelling look at the insides of two characters that — had these short stories never been published — wouldn’t affect the overall narrative one whit. It’s an unnecessary set of words, unless you happen to like reading words that are especially well put together for no other reason than it gives you pleasure; in that case, it’s very necessary.

  With AGAHF merch appearing relatively infrequently (Spangler is just now getting to her first big-ticket items — a plush and a book), the majority of the income she’s made to compensate her for the expenses of the comic and time away from paying gigs has been from the sale of PDFs (there were two prior short comic stories, both also worth your time). If you like reading things, you could do far worse than to kick three (3) dollars (US) into the pot and pick up Issues.

  I think it’s great, but one might consider me to have a bias given how much I like Spangler’s work (and rumor has it that a certain hack web com artist pseudojournalist wrote the forward to her first book). Fortunately, as LeVar Burton always used to say, you don’t have to take my word for it — if you spring for the three bucks and utterly hate it, email me and I’ll split the cost with you⁴. I don’t think I’m going to be out much money.

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¹ Second place: Jeph Jacques, who it turns out went to college with Spangler. Small world.

² My niece, who works a counter for a major cosmetics vendor, tells me that Spangler’s piece is 100% accurate in every way.

³ What you would need to know is that Mare and Rachel were agents in an experimental Federal program that involved untried technology and mental conditioning techniques that left the survivors damaged. There, all caught up. If you want the longer recap, it’s here.

⁴ I am sincere in this offer, and trust that anybody who makes a claim to me for a buck-fifty will likewise be sincere and able to articulate why they disliked it. Those obviously trying to cash in on the (very little) money will be mercilessly mocked, but will also get the $1.50; a deal’s a deal, and I have no desire to face the wheel.

We mentioned last week some of the twisted history of the … let us say unpromising performance of the printer of Ryan North’s latest Dinosaur Comics opus. It seems that the metaphorical woods that this book had to traverse to get to you haven’t quite been cleared, but at least the remainder of the forest has been set ablaze. One takes comfort where one can.

To recap: the Hope Xinyuan Book Printing Company (with local offices in Pennsylvania, and history of being sued) produces a book run for North via TopatoCo, books which promptly fell apart. $25,000 of books that promptly fell apart. Following much heartache, they apparently got their act together enough to promise a full run of replacements.

Which promise has now been flaked upon, in that they have apparently closed up shop, have a dead website, and no way to deliver said books. This puts a limit on book sales, as there is a limited stock and resupply via an actual company will likely have to wait until after Christmas. More at the twitterfeed of TopatoCo Supremo Jeff Rowland.

There are only a few meager stabs of potential bright light in this dark cloud of complete suckitude: other TopatoCo products are unaffected. The internet is sleuthing and volunteering information¹. Hope Xinyuan Book Printing Company will not ever get business from the webcomics community again. And similar over-screwings by webcomics merch-related contract services have, in the past, resulted in seismic shifts that revolutionized webcomics for the better. It’s not a smoking crater strewn with the corpses of Ryan North’s enemies, but it’ll have to do.

Want something not completely infuriating? How about The Team Up of the New Century Which Guarantees Nothing Will Ever Be The Same? I refer, naturally, to KC Green and Lin Visel have teamed up for a comic full of naked fun times. Geez, SS Myra launched yesterday, Get Fucked (subscription required) launched today. Who makes the jump to porny goodnes next?

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¹ If any of you in the Philadelphia area wanted to do some onsite surveillance, here’s where to stake out.