So, I gotta renew my CPR certification this weekend, do some community events with my EMS crew, or I’d be totally heading to conventions, one or the other, on opposite sides of the continent for my convenience.

• For those of the Canadian bent (or with a current passport, mine’s in renewal right now), there’s the Calgary Expo, featuring the likes of Cameron Stewart, Danielle Corsetto, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub, Lar deSouza & Ryan Sohmer, Scott Kurtz, Tarol Hunt, and the TopatoCo Crüe (including Chris Hastings, David Malki !, Emily Horne & Joey Comoeau, Ethan Nicolle, Jeffrey Rowland, Jeph Jacques, Kate Beaton, KC Green, and Ryan North).
• For those of you that don’t have Calgary in your plans, there’s MFTWWorld¹ — Philadelphia, featuring Christopher Baldwin, Colleen AF Venable, and hometown boy Brad Guigar, who’s debuting his latest Evil, Inc collected volume, which only just arrived.
• Instead of hitting the shows, I believe I’ll be mixing up some drinks at home, with the help of some new recipes from my fellow cocktail-enthusiast, “Doctor” Chris Hastings. Seems that Saveur magazine has been contracting with a series of cartoonists for recipes in comics form², and Doc’s just went up — an exploration of ginger-themed mixed drinks, which I am assured underwent extensive and rigorous quality testing.

  There’s both classics and original recipes, one of which, the GingerJack, makes liberal use of Laird’s bottled in bond straight apple brandy [PDF] (aka “the good stuff”). It’s been confirmed that Hastings’s recipe for the GingerJack is original, as I was present when he was introduced to Lisa Laird Dunn (the 11th generation of Lairds to head the family distillery), who confirmed that she’s heard of no such use of her product before, and that it sounds “delicious”. I’m gonna count that as proof — 100 proof, to be exact.

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¹ Megan Fox Tits Wolverine, the truth-in-advertising name for the magazine once known as Wizard, whose successor company runs this and a million other “comics” shows.

² Check out last week’s contribution, by Dorothy Gambrell, for chocolate ice cream with chili peppers. Yum.

It was that, or GANK A BIG HOOLER, BUDDY! TELL’M GARY SENT YA!

• Since we’re quoting Karl Kerschl’s entirely wonderful The Abominable Charles Christopher (which turned 200 weekly updates or just shy of four years old yesterday), one should note that the big guy is about to undergo some changes. X-TREME changes:
  

  While ‘The Abominable Charles Christopher‘ is dear to my heart, it is unfortunately not reaching a wide enough readership to sustain its continued production. Not in its current incarnation, at least!

  I present to you a bold new direction. I call it ‘ABOMINABLE X-TREME’ and it will change forever the way you think about woodland creatures or integrity!

  Gone are the boring conversations! Gone are the insufferable antics! Prepare for a whole new world of pain as CHARLES X-TOPHER fights his way through hordes of wolves, bats and killer spiders, all in the name of ACTION!

  ABOMINABLE X-TREME starts NEXT WEDNESDAY and will cost 99 cents, less than a dollar more than it costs now!

  It’s not just ABOMINABLE, it’s EXXXXXXTREEEEEEEME!!!

  So, yeah. That’s certainly … a thing¹.

• If you like things all loud and shouty, may I also suggest that you pick up the debut Chris Hastings major-publisher comical book? I’ve never read a Deadpool comic before, and apart from the overabundance of Deadpool cosplayers (of all shapes and sizes) at conventions, have had literally no interaction with the character. Hastings, however, writes a comic book that disposes of whatever character backstory and line-wide crossover (THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!) in a quick narration box and gets down to the story at hand. A story that reads like how King Radical might behave if he were seriously unhinged and more interested in making a quick buck than supporting the fine folk of Cumberland, Maryland. Also, there are bees exploding out of the gas tank of a monster truck. I’d say that you can’t pay somebody to think up entertainment this good, but in fact you can, and should you buy Fear Itself: Deadpool (1 of 3), you will be doing exactly that.
• We at Fleen have mentioned the forthcoming PhD Comics movie in the past, as it was under development. Well, consider it developed fully, as it’s got a spankin’ new website, complete with trailer, cast and character info, and photos galore. I have just a few things to say:
  1. This looks great, Jorge
  2. The actors you got for Professor Smith and Mike are so close to your designs, you must have grown them in a lab
  3. I see that you have a screening in the works for Rutgers, which just happens to be in my back yard, so I will be attending the hell out your fine cinematical entertainment, just tell me the where ‘n’ when

  Best of all, with the movie all wrapped and every-damn-thing, we will hopefully get more PhD Comics updates in the near future.

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¹ For the overly gullible, it is no kind of thing at all. Relax.

No theme today. Sorry.

• Reminder: Anya’s Ghost, Astronaut Academy, and Level Up all release today. Reiteration: Anya’s Ghost remains the best comics I’ve read all year.
• Scott Kurtz continues to mend (and occasionally trip all the balls) from his busted rib, leading to a searing pain in his drawing arm and an impromptu guest week-or-two. It’s pretty cool, actually, because today’s guest strip pointed me back to a webcomic I discovered earlier this year, then promptly lost the link for — Frankenstein Superstar, by John Hazard. It’s still a bit too new to do a comprehensive review on, but I was upset with myself for not being able to follow its progress, and now I can. So I guess that’s a win for everybody except Scott’s ribs? Feel better soon, Scott.
• Jon Rosenberg is getting back on the webcomicking horse, combined with the caring for infant twin sons horse, and is probably pretty darned glad to have taken the visiting the infant twin sons in the PICU horse out to pasture and let it run free, never to return¹. To celebrate, he’s got a new print and t-shirt sale goin’ on (not to mention a considerable number of expenses, cf: infant twin sons).
• Words of Wisdom² from John Allison’s blog today, on the topic of how you present yourself; this one is important enough to quote at length:
  

  On more occasions than I care to count, someone has come up to me at a comic show, pressed their little photocopied effort into my hand, and said “it’s not very good”. And 49 times out of 50, I manage to stop myself saying “then why on earth should I read it”.

  Your work may not be of a professional standard, it may be loose, “sophomoric”, poorly lettered, imperfect — it may be flat out rotten — but you finished something, and if you finished one thing, you can finish another, and you will improve.

  Self-criticism is a valid exercise and a vital component of improvement. But it is not an attractive attribute to strangers.

  Out and about, on the scene, I want to see you beaming with pride that you made it out of that room with all your teeth and most of your sensibilities intact. [emphasis original]

Very little to add. If you’re the sort to judge your cartooning skills as inferior to John Allison’s, it’s not a leap to judge your social skills as being the same; you’d leap at the opportunity to follow his cartooning advice, so give his personal interaction advice a damn good listen.

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¹ Or possibly shooting that particular horse with high-yield atomic weaponry, you can never be sure, and it was a bastard of a horse anyway.

² The capital-w is warranted, as these words are very wise.

Warm, bright, sunny, low humidity, and just hours after an anxious afternoon/evening of tornado watches. Oh weather, can you be any crazier/more wonderful?

• It’s less than a week until three books by noted webcomickers drop — one may stoke anticipation for Anya’s Ghost, Astronaut Academy, and Level Up here, here, and here, respectively. Come Tuesday, you can find out if I was right about them or not¹.
• Heroes Con kicks off this weekend (starting tomorrow, actually) in Charlotte, NC, and while their website seems to list a considerable number of guest cancellations (including Frank’n’Becky and Tyson Hesse), one has to expect a certain amount of last-minute plan changing and it’s nice to know in advance of the show rather than be disappointed, yes? In any event, Fleen Faves heading to the show include Danielle Corsetto, Dustin Harbin, David Malki !, Carla Speed McNeil, Andy Runton, Dean Trippe, Joel Watson, and Jim Zubkavitch. Tell ’em I said hi.
• If you find yourself in the opposite of North Carolina (generally agreed by most authorities to be Toronto), you can still get your fill of webcomics people, as Ryan North² will be speaking tomorrow night on comics as part of a lecture series that invites people from completely different fields to talk on completely different things to spark creativity. As the website of The Treehouse Group states:
  

  3 people × 3 topics = 1,000 ideas

  North will be joined by John Paul Morgan (speaking on the process of invention) and Nathalie Desrosiers (speaking on Twitter and civil liberties).

• Finally, it has been established in the past that if there’s one thing that gets under the skin of Kate Beaton, it’s that comics cliche of the woman twisting her spine to show of breasts and buttocks simultaneously (and a rightly-so under-skin getting, as it’s a truly ridiculous and pandering pose). Exhibit A.

  It has also been established that when something does get under the skin of Kate Beaton, that something is in for a cartoon dope-slapping. Exhibits B, C, and D. Just in case you ever wondered, Huh. Can cartoon high-heeled shoes ever truly be sarcastic? the answer is “yes”.

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¹ I was.
² The linguistically pedantic amongst you may object to the term “webcomics people” being applied to Ryan North, who forms but one webcomics person. However, these pedants are overlooking the fact that Ryan North easily qualifies for a plural term, much like how the Queen of England uses “we” and “us”. Ryan North is, after all, both the Toronto Man-Mountain and the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities. Deal with it.

Still tethering, so let’s do this quickly:

• In re: that ol’ LICD Kickstarter thang, Ryan Sohmer opines:
  

  Holy balls. We just sailed right through 75k. Looks like I’ve got a pilot to make.

• First informed of via the Twitterings of Kean Soo, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the utterly gorgeous Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (by Tony Cliff), which started a few days ago and is more gorgeous than anything not born directly from the hand of Hergé. The first four pages of the online graphic novel are now available for your perusal, and hoo boy if that splash panel on the home page doesn’t leave me waiting for the action to kick in. This is going to be one to watch, folks.
• Have been obsessively re-reading the copy of Save Yourself, Mammal which Zach Weiner was kind enough to gift me with just prior to the long weekend. Not that it’s a long read (even the most appreciative of Mr Weiner’s fans will be tearing through the pages as warp speed, devouring the gags), but there’s a Choose Your Own Adventure scattered through the first 65 or so pages, and I haven’t achieved all the endings yet. First time through, though? I became a doctor that performed surgery with a katana — it’s hard to top that.
• Finally, the best news I’ve heard all year, from Mr Jon Rosenberg:
  

  Yes! My babies are coming home from the hospital today!

  A few months ago we didn’t know if they were going to survive, and now they are healthy and adorable. Modern medical science is amazing.

  Babies are finally home, safe and sound. For the first time since Feb. I don’t have to go to a hospital tomorrow.

  There’s a photo of young Messers Rosenberg which you may wish to enjoy before the honeymoon’s over. Because babies, they change things:

  Survived our first night with the twins. Not to imply that they are trying to assassinate me. But I did find a tiny piece of piano wire.

  Well done, Team Babies.

Slow, but awesome. We’ll just put a few things here and call it good.

• There were webcartoonists at this weekend’s NCS Reuben Awards, and lo it was good. Dave Kellett, Kate Beaton, and Kris Straub all gave their takes on the evening’s goings-on, with Scott C contributing both semiphotobombery and a killer sketch of Scott Kurtz (seriously, Scott’s drawings of people look more like those people than the people themselves do). For deeper analysis, Straub had some pretty inspiring thoughts; it was terrific to watch all of this happen (at a distance), and it’s thrilling to see that the long Print vs Web cold war has had its Nixon goes to China moment. Things only get better from here.
• Speaking of Kate Beaton (which one cannot do too often), Drawn and Quaterly has released the cover of her next book, due in October. It’s pretty.
• Correction to a post last week — I remarked that there were five contenders left in the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, which turns out not to be correct. Michael Payne has pointed out that although Mike Stevens is still listed as in the running on the main DGIMC page, in the forums it is confirmed that Stevens fell out of the competition on 19 May. We at Fleen regret the error and congratulate the four remaining competitors: Payne, Andrew Rothery, R Smith, and Brad “Ladies, Please, He’s Taken!” Guigar. One may note at this time that the remaining four could opt to split the prize money and still come out more than ten times ahead of their original $20 buy-in.

I’m gonna make this quick, because it’s a holiday weekend starting. Gonna get me some prime cuts of meat from my favorite restarauteurs, do some damn grilling¹. Don’t expect an update on Monday, I’ll be doing the parade thing with my EMT cohorts.

In the meantime, one tiny little followup for you, one that I’m slightly surprised by. I tossed out an idea for a Machine of Death 2 story, and I’ve gotten feedback that cracks are being taken at it, including from one of the five remaining contestants in the Daily Grind Ironman Challenge. I am very much looking forward to reading anything that y’all come up with, and positively giddy that something developed from my little brainbomb might (probably not, let’s be realistic, there’s a lot of entrants) make it into MoD2.

And with that, I’m outta here. Enjoy the long weekend, everybody!

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¹ Lump charcoal 4 lyfe, yo.

Ooof, late start today. How’s about some merch news?

• Not satisfied with merely one Book 4, Kris Straub releases two Books 4 (not to be confused with Book 8): Starslip Book 4 and Chainsawsuit Book 4 are available for your reading pleasure.
• Previously available: Gordon McAlpin (my sporting bet nemesis) has had Multiplex‘s first book, Enjoy Your Show out since September, but now it gets a bump in terms of availability. Diamond Comics (who are pretty much the sole distributor to comic shops) is listing the book in their June PREVIEWS catalog (with a “Movie Comics” theme), where it’s Staff Pick. If you’ve been meaning to grab it, mention it to your friendly local comic shop.
• From the Evil Twin, news that the $50 membership fee for WorldCon, which gets you the right to vote in the Hugo Awards, will also get you an e-copy of all the nominated works, which has a street value of $46. If you didn’t want to wait for a physical copy of the latest Schlock or Girl Genius storylines, and wanted to read about a million other words, this is the Bargain of the Century.
• Following up on yesterday’s Ryan Sohmer twitterfest: the Least I Could Do pilot project is live on Kickstarter, with a goal of US$75,000 in 60 days. Scott & Kris managed to get US$50,000 in about four days, so something tells me this is doable.
• Speaking of Canadian Ryans, Ryan North just broke the news that the Giant Squishable T-Rex is to be sold … let’s let him tell it:
  

  The NYC National History Museum will soon have these T-Rexes – http://tinyurl.com/yds6ne7 – in their store.

  I think he means the natural history museum, which would be the American Museum of Natural History, a place that I regularly frequent. Cool news. Even cooler if they can modify their penny squisher to make the T-Rex design say some thing from panel two¹.

• Finally: Steve Wolfhard. Cat Rackham book. Buy it.

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¹ Ryan, send me your address, I have something for you.

We’re a couple of weeks into submissions for Machine of Death 2 (Electric Deathaloo), and the news of just how many stories have been submitted is pretty amazing. From David Malki !’s twitterfeed:

So far we have received 103 submissions, for a total word count of approx. 317,000. (That is about the length of The Fountainhead)

We are at 1.5 Crime and Punishments, 2 Grapes of Wraths, and 0.6 Wars and Peace.

About 1.3 Ulysseux and 1.5 Mobies Dick

So, quite a lot for Messers Malki !, Bennardo, and North to sort through. Since my submission for the original MoD was rejected (along with about 96% of all submissions, if my back of the envelope figures are good, so no hard feelings to Mr North, Mr Bennardo and Mr Dreamcrusher), I hadn’t really thought of any MoD stories I’d like to tell, but to be honest — the new submissions announcement caused one to pop into my head.

Here’s the thing, though — I’ve got a germ of an idea, maybe even a unique idea in the MoDiverse, but I don’t think that I can develop it to the point where it would be very good. As we at Fleen have discussed in the past, the notion that ideas are scarce is at best a distraction — execution is all that matters.

Thus, I’m giving this one away — I have no idea if it’s as unique as it could be, I have no idea if anybody out there can develop it to the point that it’s good enough for inclusion, and I sincerely apologize to Messers Bennardo, North, and Malki ! if they get flooded with poorly-executed submissions taken from this seed. Details below the cut, and no complaining if it turns out nobody but me wants to read a story built around this idea.

• Seen ‘tother day on American Elf: James Kochalka expands his (literal) multimedia conquest to filmdom, and will possibly be viewable on your TV:
  

  I performed in a really cool animated (rotoscoped and other techniques) indy sci-fi romance, called MARS. The movie has never seen wide release, but they’re currently in negotiations with Netflix to make the movie available on their service. So, please add MARS to your netflix queue! This will help make our dream of getting the movie on Netflix come true.

  I’d be curious to see MARS, if only to find out if rotoKochalka gets elf ears at some point.

• Big round numbers alert: Michael Terracciano hits 2500 updates of Dominic Deegan: O_____ for Hire¹. One may also note that by an accident of timing, the day after tomorrow will also be the ninth anniversary of Dominic Deegan; long time, lotta strips.

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¹ I work for a company that makes various solutions for data — storage, analysis, and general info-bothering — and make it a personal policy to never spell out or pronounce The O Word because I dislike their products. No reflection on Terracciano’s work is meant or implied.

(more…)

That photo is one dromaeosaurid away from being Randall Munroe‘s worst nightmare. Then again, how can you hate the clade that gave us Bambiraptor?

• For those of you that didn’t make it to the Save Yourself, Mammal! launch party this past Sunday, there is photographic evidence of the fun that you missed out on. The book is still listed at the same link as the just-concluded pre-order it’s been shipping for a couple of days now over at Breadpig; presumably the coming weeks will bring sales points at Zach Weiner’s Internet Weinerporium, aka his TopatoCo storefront.
• Via the mailbag, from Noel:
  

  Friday May 13th is going be the second Dialogue Free Comics Day. It’s when we encourage webcomics to concentrate on the visual side of things and post a comic with no dialogue in it. We had a great response last year and are hoping for even more this year.

  I’ll be honest, I missed this being A Thing last year, but the idea intrigues me. The date of Friday was set on 20 April, but I have only recently heard that this was going around, so I’m unsure how big a response there will be from creators, but it’s a really interesting idea. One of those stretch your cartooning muscles type exercises, even.