For those of you wondering, MoCCA Art Fest 2011 (9 and 10 April, at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan) tables are almost available [PDF]. There were a couple years there where applications were only accepted by mail and by hand, and local cartoonists pretty much shut out everybody else, but the note here says:

Registrations will be accepted on a first come, first served basis beginning August 10th by fax (212-254-3590), mail (594 Broadway, ste. 401, New York, NY 10012), email (exhibitors@moccany.org), and in person.

… which ought to equalize things nicely. It was pretty well-run this year compared to last (with a rookie crew of show-runners and unseasonable heat turning 2009 into a sweaty mess), but since I don’t exhibit you’ll have to decide for yourselves if the table costs (below the cut) are worth it.

• Speaking of time-sensitive opportunities, we’re just four days away from Jenny Everywhere Day 2010. In case you’ve forgotten (it has been nearly a year since we mentioned her), Ms Everywhere is:
  

  [A]n open source character created in 2001 by Steven Wintle and the members of the Barbalith forums. She’s free to use by anyone in any capacity they see fit.

  Jenny exists in all realities at the same time and her powers stem from an ability to “Shift” herself and others from one reality to another. Her exact powers/limitations within any given story are up to the people working on it.

  The two things that make her “Jenny Everywhere” are her goggles and her scarf. Every other aspect to her design (including race, body type, hair color, eye color, number of limbs, etc.) are completely up for grabs and fall under the discretion of the creator.

  Create your own interpretation of Jenny Everywhere, and submit on or before the 13th to be part of the fun.

• News in the webcomics-publishing sphere: Chris and Kyle Bolton of SMASH have signed a deal to have Season One of their webcomic published by Candlewick Press (who appear to be new to the comics game, but have quite a catalog of kids and YA books).

  SMASH has a loose-limbed, gleefully frenetic style to the art (not unlike Skottie Young’s work on the OZ adaptations at Marvel) and a breakneck pace to the story, as befits a 10 year old that suddenly finds himself all supered-up. Best of all, with publication (date TBA) all arranged, the Boltons have time to get SMASH season two underway, with serialization starting next month.

• Finally, is there no limit to the depths to which he will sink? Two geekly pursuits stretched and squashed into a four-word pun that strains language to the breaking point? Brad Guigar is a bad man. A very bad man.

(more…)

Long week, cocktails still hours away. Let’s do this.

• Gather ’round children, and let me tell you a story. First, there was the idea, then the dream. Dinosaur Comics posited the idea of a machine that could tell you how you would die, and David Malki !, Ryan North, and Matthew Bennardo had the dream of collecting stories inspired by that machine.

  The dream had a name: Machine of Death, an anthology of stories about the machine and how it affected people, illustrated by webcomicdom’s finest, released as print book, audiobook, and Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 licensed PDF.

  The stories were selected (so few stories, crushing the dreams of more than 600 aspirants [and now you know why David Malki ! is known to this day as The Dreamcrusher, children]), the illustrators obtained, and then … nothing.

  Until now.

  After a long year of excitement, disappointment, renewed excitement, continued disappointment, thickheadedness, obstinacy and relief, we are pleased to announce that Machine of Death will be officially released this October by Bearstache Books, the boutique printing arm of Wondermark Enterprises.

  So that’s all right, then.

• Lotta guest strips flying through the aether to give the aforementioned Ryan North a break for his upcoming troth-plighting (Happy third night of RyanAndJennyMas, everybody), including today’s by the aforementioned Dreamcrusher. But these are not your only shots at guest strips, whoa no. For instance, Wes Molebash is the sort to plan ahead for disaster, and has issued an open call for Max vs Max guest strippage:
  

  Send your guest strips to me at wes (at) maxvsmax (dot) com and use Guest Strip Submission as the subject. If you do not use Guest Strip Submission as the subject, then it is likely your submission will get buried in my inbox never to be seen again.

  Save your comics as .PNG or .GIF files and make sure they are 980 pixels wide. I don’t care how tall they are. They can be black-and-white, color, grayscale . . . whatever. Draw my comic the way YOU would draw my comic.

  I don’t really care what you write about or what characters you feature. I do ask that you keep it fairly clean (PG or PG-13).

  I’m not sure when these strips will run. They may get published at the end of the month during my wedding week, or I may save them for a later date. You may want to keep that in mind during your writing process.

  Please include any links and pertinent information about your blog/comic strip/website in the body of your email. I want to send you some link love for helping me out, and I won’t be able to do that if you don’t give me a URL.

  Man, everybody’s getting married. Maybe I should do that sometime.

• Is there anything that can’t catch fire with a Kickstarter crowd? Described by its own creator as a “combination of really cute and slightly oogy”, the PuppyCow plush has hit about 1/3 of goal in four days. If you always wanted an abomination of nature craftded “seven inches tall and featur[ing] udders made out of a fake leather material”, now’s your chance.
• Time’s running out to send some last minute good wishes to Steven Cloud before he drops himself into a war zone for the sheer beardiness of it. Rall will be sending out updates via Stephanie McMillan, so follow her on Twitter or watch this page for important news. Honestly, I hope there isn’t any — no news means that Cloudy, Bors, and Rall are alive, fed, and not too uncomfortable, and I wish nothing less than the most boring trip ever for them.

Could it possibly be too early to congratulate Ryan North and Jenn Klug on their upcoming (this weekend) nuptials? No, it could not possibly. In fact, Ryan is such a large man, I suspect that each year will require several days of congratulations on either side of the actual date to adequately express ones appreciation of said marriage. Happy first night of RyanAndJennyMas, everybody.

Also, there will be rad Dinosaur Comics guest strips for a while, such as the above standout by John Allison.

• Breaking news! David Malki ! and Dave Kellett, in accordance with ancient Dave Law (and that community service thing they got slapped with) are raising money for 826 Valencia‘s Los Angeles chapter, 826LA. They are doing so by competing in a spelling bee that allows teams to cheat based on how much money they raise. I’ll let Mr Malki ! explain:
  

  [I]t takes place August 14 in Santa Monica, CA. Keith, Dave Kellett and I are on a team called “The Sweaty Hams,” because we are all men and, well, sometimes things happen. We’re somewhat late-comers to the fundraising game, so we are trying to raise pledges to buy “cheats” so we can be competitive in the event!

  Cheats include passing on a difficult word, buying immunity after spelling a word wrong, swapping places with another team member, and other non-officially-endorsed-by-the-American-Spelling-Association deviousnesses. (See how I used a word that’s probably not in their official lexicon?) We only get cheats — and thus, a fighting chance against the other teams with loads of cheats — if we raise money! 826LA is a volunteer-based organization that helps kids in a number of remarkable and wonderful ways. Will you please help our team with a donation?

  The event is less than two weeks away and thanks to rudderless team leadership we are entering the fundraising race way at the back of the pack. PLEASE DO NOT LET US FAIL IN THIS

  AS WE DO MOST EVERYTHING ELSE [emphasis original]

  Guys, I’m going to be honest here. Neither David nor Dave is necessarily “down” enough with your arbitrary “rules” to spell words “correctly” and if they bomb at this competition it will look bad for webcomics as a whole. They are going to need all the help they can get to keep from embarrassing you personally; even getting a simple one-letter hint costs a hundred smackers, and something tells me they’re going to rely on the Invent-A-Word ploy ($1500 each) a lot. A couple bucks now could save a lot of heartache later.

• New Octopus Pie after Meredith Gran’s book-tour hiatus, and even better — there will be more every Monday-Wednesday-Friday! Also, her studiomate (and Latin Heartthrob) Aaron Diaz has the results of the Dresden Codak Reenactment Contest, meaning it’s been a hell of a productive time at Dunning-Kreger Solutions, Ltd.

I’ve largely completed my SDCC acquired media binge. Selected two-sentence reviews follow:

• Flight 7: Prepare to have your mind blown as Michel Gagné’s Rex folds back on itself recursively, with captions connecting to the next part of the story, found in Flight 2. The rest is simply wonderful, with Kazu Kibuishi adhering most closely to the now largely-forgotten theme suggested by the series title.
• Family Man: Dylan Meconis is very, very good with the art, very, very complete with the footnotes, and very, very evil to leave us on the cliffhanger she did. Give her your attention and money.
• SMBC Theater Goes To Hell: This DVD collection of sketches goes out of its way to convince me that Zach Weiner and James Ashby are the rudest, foulest, and generally worst people in the world, and succeeds. So I guess that’s good for them?
• Koko Be Good Not actually obtained in San Diego because Gina Gagliano assured me a complimentary review copy would be waiting for me at home and it was. Jen Wang’s story of finding out that what you think you want isn’t always what you really want has been haunting me, and is easily the best thing I’ve read since Tracy White’s How I Made It To Eighteen; highest recommendation, obtain on day-of-release if you enjoy things that are awesome.

Edit to clarify: the SMBC Theater DVD was given to me by the creators, and to add previously-missed links.

Let’s start with the fun stuff.

• Do you like free booze? Sure, we all do.¹ Good news for you, Sparky — Dave Kellett has worked his magic and (yet again) lined up a free booze sponsor for his latest book launch party. Those of you lucky enough to be in the vicinity of Beverly Hills can check out the latest Sheldon and Drive collections, and pound down completely free tequila until the very fancy people eject you from the venue, and possibly the city limits. If you’re found two days later in a tub full o’ ice missing a kidney, don’t blame Dave; tequila must be treated with respect.
• Heard on the premiere business-information program of these shores on Monday afternoon: a story on policing internet behavior and a reference to the Greater Internet uh, Jerkwad, Theory. Heard on the same program Tuesday afternoon, a belated recognition of the authors of said theory. Dunno if Mike and Jerry listen to Marketplace or not, but this is as close as you can get to an official imprimatur from the business community that They Matter.
• Speaking of commerce, Andy Bell sold literally a thousand of his Android toys at San Diego, and only via careful rationing did they last to almost lunchtime on Saturday. For those of you not lucky enough to score some, the newest resupply is due up at the Dead Zebra site in the next week or two.
• Guess what I’m getting: Dr McNinja Boy Scout patches! The Potomac Council is selling its leftovers, details of which can be found here. If you’re interested I’d email sooner rather than later, but it’s one very nice woman named Susan that’s taking care of this sudden influx of attention, so be polite and patient with her. Also, she’s trying to keep track of order requests, addresses, and payment info, which is much simpler if you reply to her emails instead of starting new ones with each exchange.

Okay, time to get serious. Go read this piece at The Comics Journal on censorship in Sweden, then come back. For those of you who are contrary and don’t feel like reading, it concerns an established, long-respected manga translator who was convicted in June on the charge of possessing child pornography, for having on his computer a few dozen scanned manga pages related to translation projects. The pictures were deemed to be “of a sexual nature” and to depict “characters under the age of 18”. Woo, pedophile off the streets, we can all sleep better at night, forces of decency triumph.

Maybe.

Nobody knows how explicit the pictures (again, not photos, not anything that actually depicts any living person, much less a child) might be because it’s illegal for them to be seen by anybody, and therefore we have only the prosecutor’s word to go on. And here’s the kicker:

In Sweden, all images – be it photos, movies, animations or drawings – depicting what one can understand to be a child (i.e. under the age of 18) in a sexual situation, are regarded as child pornography, since the legislators agreed on using the word “image” instead of “photo” in the law. The ban does not apply to text, though, only images.

This law has been active for almost a decade, but this ruling is the first one ever in Sweden where drawn images have been deemed child pornography in a court of law, and it might thus create a precedent. This could have far-reaching consequences for comics, both for artists and readers. Serious depictions of abuse, autobiographical stories of sexual debut, or simply children without clothes on, may now be classified as child pornography. [emphasis added]

We’ll neglect for the moment the fact that the age of consent in Sweden is 15, and that it’s impossible to decide if a cartoon character that’s meant to be an adult is “too young-looking”. Instead, let’s concentrate on this:

One major problem is the fact that since it is illegal to even look at images like these, the images that were the grounds for the conviction cannot be shown anywhere. This leads to a Catch-22 situation where it is virtually impossible for anyone to decide whether something is illegal or not.

Until this gets settled? You probably shouldn’t read Rene Engström‘s highly-regarded work within the geographical boundaries of Sweden, since Johan and Tina might have been underage, Little Shit might look too young, and diary comics of bathing your kids are obviously criminal in nature.

Those links don’t work, because as much as we know that none of those things described is wrong in any way, somebody out there is screaming Won’t you please think of the children? and might make things difficult for Rene and I won’t make it any easier for them to start their witch-hunt. The fact that I need to think in those terms really pisses me off.
_______________
¹ For maximum impact, read that line in the voice of Informercial Sally Struthers.

Friday. Last day off work of vacation, weekend a-comin’. Let’s do this.

• Re: Penny Arcade‘s PATV season one finale. Wow. Just watch it.
• Re: Skin Horse book2 pre-order on Kickstarter ends in 23 hours (as of this writing). Hint: the minimum pledge that will get you a physical book (which includes a sketch) actually works out about the same as what you’d pay for a non-sketch edition of the book once you take shipping and handling into account.
• Re: The unique ability of comics to reach audiences (particularly those underserved by traditional media); sometimes this approach provokes a WHAT reaction that may undermine the intended message, but sometimes it works really well. For an example of the latter, may I refer you to Adrean Clark’s Eight Ways To Be Deaf?

  Originally run as a B&W webcomic, 8 Ways is now fully colored and available as an e-book, with print coming next month. This is how you teach somebody about your culture, cause, or goal — organically, with a bit of humor, and remembering that people are people. Over-the-top cliched demonization? That just gets you laughed at. Not “with”. At.

• Re: Missed it entirely. Blank It, the webcomic forced to be creative by trapping its only characters in an infinite, featureless plane, has shaken things up first by constraining the characters, then by transferring the cast to the opposite of the infinite, featureless plane: the interior of a box. Interesting.

By the time I get through all the stuff I brought home (purchased, given, and would have been given but Gina Gagliano told me it would be waiting for me when I got home and she was right)¹ from San Diego, webcomics will be over, done, a quaint form of amusement from Ye Olde Dayes. So in the meantime, here’s what’s going on:

• Box Brown is taking a creative leap and ending the comic that he’s best associated with; Bellen! is in the midst of breaking down the boundaries between the real Box and the thinly-disguised Ben, and when that’s done, it’s over. The good news is that this is so Brown can concentrate on the very interesting and creatively-fulfilling Everything Dies, which will become a webcomic in addition to a print series.

  This, I think, is what web/indy comics allow that print/corporate comics don’t — the ability to wrap up a story or strip, or turn it into something completely different, and let the creator not get subsumed by the creation. Look back at the early days of comic strips, and you’ll find creators that let one strip finish and another take its place all the time. Today, get into the papers with a big enough hit and that’s it — you’re locked in forever (I believe the legal term is in perpetuity) and long after you’re dead, something you thought might last for a decade is still be put together by the former assistants of former assistants or children and grandchildren.

  The ability to change direction, try an experiment on a whim, or get out on top and do something new? I think that flexibility is the unique characteristic that answers Valerie D’Orazio’s concern that webcomics might have come and gone. Les webcomics sont morts, vive les webcomics.

• Speaking of the web/indy vs print/corporate divide, the first question from the Webcomics Lightning Round Pseudo-Transcript has been getting a lot of attention, and it may be time for a clarification. Chris Eliopolous rightly comments:
  

  [T]here are a couple of us in print comics, also trying to make a go of web comics as well. Karl Kerschel, me, Skottie Young has given it a go. I’ve always been taught not to take one path-diversify. Web and print aren’t opposite ends, they are different venues.

  And I’ll have to say that this confusion is more on me than on Brad Guigar. I was typing as fast as I could, but answers were condensed and I’m pretty sure that if we asked Guigar for a clarification of his position, it would be that no one creation is both print- and webcomics; certainly a given creator can work in both worlds. Fleen apologizes for the confusion.

• Speaking of the flexibility to try something new — Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie collection provides a case in point. Covering more than 200 comics that ran over a period of a year and a half, the shift of tools and techniques is apparent, and it’s a delight to see Gran switch from pencil and pens to purely digital to her current arrangement of pencils on the Cintiq and final production with brush on Bristol. Providing a different example of flexibility, a year ago Gran decided to update Octopus Pie with whole story arcs in a massive update, but now has decided to go back to three times a week:
  

  In August, Octopus Pie is going back to a 3-a-week update schedule. …[M]ainly comes down to productivity. I know I can do way more pages on a self-imposed deadline.

• Speaking of August, one of my favorite webcomics, A Girl and Her Fed comes back from a short house-moving hiatus next week. The second part to the story kicks in then, and I’m hoping there are lots of opportunities for creator K Brooke “Otter” Spangler to use the word stabby. It’s a fun word.
• Following up on our story last week, here are the details on the new publishing ventures for Girl Genius: starting next year, three major new ventures with three publishers will spread the tale of madgirls and madboys further and wider than every before.
  
  1. Night Shade Books will publish prose novelizations of the series, starting with the first volume in Spring 2011 and subsequent volumes in 2012 and 2013. At the same time, Brilliance Audio will be releasing audio adaptations of each of these novels.
  2. TOR Books will launch their new graphic novel line in Fall 2011 with a color omnibus edition of the first three Girl Genius volumes even as Studio Foglio is publishing volumes 10 and 11, completing the first great arc of the Girl Genius saga.
  3. Finally, Alpha Entertainment (couldn’t find a link) of Copenhagen will begin publication of a Danish version of Girl Genius, in their new magazine, Comic Party in spring 2011.

  Finally, various game licenses are expected to be released in 2011: the Girl Genius ‘The Works’ card game is in for a reissue, and iPhone and Facebook games are in development.

Tomorrow: catching up with all the emails.

_______________
¹ You can find these fine wares from the following cool people.

• Purchased: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley; Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn by Meredith Gran; Penny Arcade: The Halls Below by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik; Templar, AZ: Trouble Every Day by Spike; Flight 7 edited by Kazu Kibuishi; Much The Miller’s Son Books 1 & 2 by Steve LeCoulliard; Drive: A Hero Rises by Dave Kellett; Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession by Jeffrey Rowland; Chainsawsuit 3 and F-Chords by Kris Straub; Android toy by Andy Bell.
• Given: Shi Long Pang book 1 by Ben Costa; SMBC Theater DVD by various; Tent Sale by Ian Jones-Quartey.
• Would Have Been Given But: Brain Camp By Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks; Koko Be Good by Jen Wang
• Missed Them When I Took The Earlier Photo, Dammit: Super Stupor #3 by Randy Milholland (given in conjunction with original art purchase); Family Man volume 1 by Dylan Meconis (previously ordered, picked up in person).

SDCC wears more heavily on my aged, stooped body every year, so please forgive the lateness of this post; it’s also going to be a big one, to cover my travel tomorrow, and then I can see about actually reading webcomics again. I’ve fallen a bit behind in the last five days.

• First up, news from Zach Weiner, who was at his booth with fellow SMBC Theater principal James Ashby. It was a bit odd meeting Ashby, as he’s specialized in playing some monumentally unlikeable characters on SMBCT, and I found him to be affable, funny, and not at all somebody who would kill me at the first opportunity. Probably.

  Weiner and Ashby presented me with a copy of SMBCT’s first DVD compilation, and it looks like an hour and a half of pure, distilled fun. I can’t say for certain, since the netbook that I’m travelling with has no optical drive, but it’s getting watched at the first opportunity. Weiner also shared the news that one of his previous projects (Captain Excelsior, with Chris Jones on art) is getting a book release via IDW — look for it in October, or heck, just pre-order it now.

• Speaking of pre-orders, I bumped into Ben Costa of Shi Long Pang, who was kind enough to gift me with a copy of his brand new (you can still pre-order, actually) first book. All I can say is hoo, the Xeric grant gives you a lot of options when it comes to printing your book. It’s got a gorgeous, solid visual appeal, the colors are vibrant or subtle as required, and the paper stock is thick and satisfying. It even smells good. This is going to require a leisurely read to provide a more worthwhile review, but for almost 200 pages, full color, in hardcover? $20 is a steal.
• Speaking of new print ventures, Ryan Sohmer had some interesting news about his first non-comedy comics work. BOOM! Studios will be publishing a Sohmer-penned, Jean Diaz-drawn 6-issue series (with the possibility of ongoing) called Messiah. Sohmer described it as the story of an ordinary guy called by God to be the new messiah — but not the first one. Turns out, God’s been calling messiahs for millenia, but gives them free will to redeem and save the world or not. Capitalizing on Diaz’s work with Mark Waid on Incorruptible, Waid may end up editing Messiah, which would just slightly be a good thing.
• Speaking of good things, Jeff Zugale came by to talk about some of his projects, and has said that there are discussions for a print/poster release of The Greatest Painting In The History of Art.
• The Webcomics Lightning Round panel produced a lot of information in a very brief timeframe; to keep this page from bogging down, the “transcript” (it’s not a word-for-word of what was said at the panel, but it’s as close as I can make it) is below the cut, and it’s a long ‘un. Groundrules: Brad Guigar, Robert Khoo and Scott Kurtz were given 20 seconds to answer each question, with no repeat answers — if one panelist agreed in essence with another, he just said so and moved on. Answer durations were enforced by Airhornsworman official timekeeper Erika Greco (PA designer extraordinaire), who cut off the panelists with an insistent WOOOP if their actual answer went on too long.

  The panel was held in a room with a posted capacity of 500, and was pretty much full up; however, it became apparent during the panel that a portion of the audience were camping out for a LOST panel that was being held next in the room. This earned multiple digressions onto the topic of LOST by Kurtz, each of which led to at least one forlorn LOSTie slinking out of the room, presumably upset by spoilers. That was awesome.

(more…)

How many horribly bodytype-inappropriate Isaiah Mustafa cosplayers do you think we’ll see in San Diego? On the other hand, anybody that manages to cart around a working shower stall will officially win everything.

• With the latest wave of auction completions from the Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf Coast imminent, barring any wild jumps in the last minutes of bidding, guaranteed contributions hit at least $1552.37. Remember that less than a day remains to get originals from the likes of Nedroid and Kate Beaton, and all auctions will close in less than 72 hours.
• Newest confirmed location for San Diego: Tom Siddell at the Archaia booth, #2635; be polite, he’s going to be about seven time zones out of synch.
• I picked up the latest Megatokyo yesterday, and I have to say, I think I’ve got to fundamentally change how I approach this one. I’ve been following MT online for nearly 10 years now, through art and creative team changes, six volumes, four publishers, and I don’t know how many hours of reading, and something’s got to give.

  It’s not the update schedule (Achewood is at least as randomized, and there’s extensive psychological research that says regularity is less compelling than randomly-spaced events that drag us back in when we’re just about to give up) that’s putting me off; it’s not the art, which sometimes features a low enough contrast between foreground and background as to make action hard to follow (my brain can elide over those pages and just continue once the contrast comes back). No, it’s the decompression.

  This latest volume, comprising chapters 9 and 10, which took three years to produce, covers two days worth of story. The one chapter = one day formula means that in the past decade, we’ve seen less than a fortnight’s worth of days where things actually happen. Much like Brian Bendis-scribed comics where storytelling (and especially dialogue) get so stretched out that it takes longer to read a page than the story-time it’s meant to convey, Megatokyo has slowed to the point that I just need something to happen.

  It’s still going to be in my bookmarks; hell, I’m probably going to pick up book 7 whenever that releases — but I’ve turned off the part of my brain that worries where the overall plot is going. I don’t think I’ll get the reward of random, unconnected gags again, and I can certain appreciate the effort that Fred Gallagher obviously puts into each update, but I’m not reading it for the story anymore. And this leaves me curious — anybody else read stuff that they’re disengaged from, but don’t quit entirely? Answers on a postcard.

For example, there’s this, which is totally not related to San Diego — Marvel (yep, that Marvel) is looking for a web software architect, with the relevant description being:

As a Web Software Architect, you will help define the architecture for Marvel’s interactive digital products, consisting primarily of the Marvel.com collection of Web sites and various mobile offerings. You will be involved in the design and development of cutting-edge Web applications, defining system architecture to achieve scalability and reliability goals, and researching new technologies for our evolving business systems.

Which, once translated from jobpostingese (subdialect: I know a bunch of different business phrases and think I can translate that into IT-speak) sounds somewhere between “you just have to overhaul our main site” and “we’re a year or more behind comiXology and LongBox Digital, and you have to catch us up”. Combined with the recent de-Zudafication over at DC, it looks like the big publishers are trying to figure out what they want webcomics to be (which isn’t necessarily what webcomics are). Many thanks to Friend o’ Fleen Brett “Small g, no period dammit” Porter for the story tip.

• Updates to the SDCC Webcomics Locate-o-Tron continue apace, particularly concerning the news that Doug TenNapel tweeted that his booth will be hosting a certain officer of the law with a stick-mounted cleaver.
• Speaking of tweeting, Christopher Hastings mentioned that Some kid named Malachai sent me a story to draw?, which led to much speculation confirmed by Ethan Nicolle: Axe Cop and Dr McNinja team-up!
• Speaking of San Diego, Scott Kurtz promo’ed his show merch debuts, and much as the vinyl figures look awesome, the line that jumped out at me was:
  

  PvP book 8 will be debuting at the show. This is your first chance to pick up the latest volume of PvP and I’m very proud of this collection. It collects all the strips from 2008 and is the first PvP collection I’ve self published since 2001 (more on that at a later date). [emphasis mine]

  That “later date” turns out to be today, as the press release has been seen all over the comics blogosphere today (for example, with Brigid Alverson). Somewhere in my stacks, I still have Kurtz’s previous self-published work, and I always wondered in the back of my head how long it would be before he returned to the world of DIY.

  With a wealth of experience and advice from his studiomates to call on, I imagine that the mechanical presentation will be better than we’ve seen in the past, and since it’s all on him, I suspect that he’ll push himself to a schedule that’s both regular and on a short delay from on-line presentation. Self-publishing can be a headache, no doubt, but every self-publisher I’ve spoken to is pretty glad to have that control.

• Oh, yeah, and there’s the return of The Webcomics Section, this year coordinated by Jorge Cham, who’s so dedicated to the idea of a webcomics-themed giveaway that he did the wrangling work despite the fact that he won’t even be at San Diego. Four pages of four-color goodness on genuine newsprint, yours for the grabbing pretty much anywhere in webcomicland for the duration of the show, or until we run out.

WordPress’s spam filters held a Bill Barnes infocomment for moderation, and passed along two posts hawking bogus Sony Viao batteries. Bad algorithms, or does it know something we don’t?

In any event, we can update yesterday’s SDCC Webcomics Locate-o-Matic as follows:

Booth 1228 — Evil, Inc and Friends
Booth 1229 — Keenspot
Booth 1231 — TopatoCo
Booth 1234 — Tiny Kitten Teeth
Booth 1237 — Penny Arcade
Booth 1330 — Blank Label
Booth 1337 — Dumbrella
Booth 2300 — Unshelved

As this list grows, we’ll just keep including it at the bottom of posts so that it doesn’t get in the way.

• Latest Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf Coast total: $1888.02, with most of the swing in just one or two items. Come on, people, there’s some real bargains still out there. NB: the Thursday tranche of offerings has not yet gone up.
• From the Webcomics Past department, Padraic Harley wrote:
  

  I was wondering if you folks know whatever happened to Matt Milby and his Malfunction Junction webcomic? It disappeared aaaages ago and myself and my friends still get pangs of missing it.

  Milby did some pretty good work and contributed a fair number of guest comics around 2006 – 2007 before completely dropping out of sight about two years ago. If anybody knows of Milby’s whereabouts, let him know that at least one fan is curious.

• Speaking of past webcomics experiences, I remember archive trawling my way through Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic a couple years ago; something about beholder home life made me chuckle, and you can never have too many beholders.

  Somewhere around strip 200 I had to go do something else and never got back to it. I noticed ’em at Archive Binge realized that the only way for YAFGC to be at 1502 updates would be to update pretty much without fail every day since. That was worth a trip over to the site, where I was pleased to see that the art has gotten sharper and more ambitious, the story arcs regularly run for hundreds of strips, and there’s now a book out.

  Volume One: The First Year covers exactly that — 366 comics by Rich Morris, who I now realize was the guy that did the ultimate in nerd-tastic tribute comicking, a 257-page Doctor Who epic that included all ten Doctors (as they were at the time) and every companion (again, as of the time of writing). Oh, and about a zillion other pages of comics, too.

  Given the sheer volume of comics (in different genres) that Morris is cranking out, a bit of sketchy, pencil-y work is entirely understandable (actually, it looks a bit like animation pencil tests, and the faces especially have a slightly exaggerated, animation feel to them, which is doubly understandable given that Morris lists his day job as storyboard artist). If fantasy gaming and Doctor Who aren’t your thing, there’s surely something here that will appeal to you. Check ’em out, and try not to spend more than five or six hours at a time crawling through back strips — it’s bad for your posture.