Let’s get this thing done — I gots grillin’ to do this weekend.

• Something I saw on Twitter last night that you might have missed:
  

  oops, I missed a few months when I transferred to the new site. I hit 3k two comics ago. Ah well, I’ll do a big strip for the 4,000th toon.

  Which, if my count is correct, would make this the 3000th update of The Devil’s Panties, complete with color. The list of webcomics long runners at the 3000 threshold appears to now number 12, and in a few weeks will hit 13. Well done Jennie Breeden, and (in three weeks) Dave Kellett.

• We’ve mentioned a number of the Meredith Gran Octotour dates here, and we’ve missed mentioning a few. What looks to be one of the larger signings will kick off on Tuesday, 7 July at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn. The fun starts at 7:00pm, and Gran will be joined by R Stevens, Jon Rosenberg, and Chris Hastings signing their own offerings, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other webcomics luminaries drop in to say howdy. This is my local stop on Gran’s tour, and dammit, I can’t make it. Tuesday is EMS night, and if we get no calls I am gonna be pissed. Hear that, citizens? Get seriously sick and/or injured to justify my absence from this event.
• Blast from the past: it’s got to be five years now since Scotty Arsenault’s Commander Kitty went on a temporary hiatus that became pretty permanent. Yesterday I got an email from Arsenault informing me that the hiatus was over, and CK is back. There was a lot of goofy fun in those strips way back when, and the reboot seems to be just as enjoyable. Whether you ever read about the intrepid spacefaring felines before or not, take a moment to check out the all-new Commander Kitty.

It occurs to me that a running list of my titles here at Fleen would actually constitute a pretty accurate (if brief) day-to-day history of life in my early 40s. That’s a sobering thought, which I suppose means I can go drink to make up for the soberification (shut up, it is too a word).

• Neglected to mention yesterday that Ursula Vernon’s Digger is now up to book 5, which those of you at Anthrocon can buy starting about … now? I haven’t found any info about where/when the rest of us will be able to purchase it, but I will be certain to share with you once I know. Also revealed on that page is the fact that we’re barrelling towards the story’s conclusion; I had known that Digger was due to wrap this year, but seeing that we’re in the actual endgame — glad to see how it will all wrap up, sorry that it’ll be done.
• Got some Intervention news for y’all today. As far back as February (when the internet culture show was first announced), it was known that some of the programming tracks would be hands-on; in particular, there would be sessions devoted to content management systems and their installation/configuration. Today, that particular track got a little more interesting:
  

  Big announcement for webcomic artists, WordPress users, and web developers: we’ve just signed up the lead programming developer for ComicPress, Frumph, to appear at Intervention and host panels and hands-on workshops for CSS, WordPress, and ComicPress set up and tweaking.

  [T]his is your opportunity to talk with and get one-on-one advice and tips directly from the developer about set up and upgrading. We will be announcing details on how you can register for the hands-on workshops in the next few days, along with the costs for these extra limited events. Frumph will also be on some open panels, so anyone can stop in and ask general questions as well.

  This is especially interesting, given that Frumph (or Phil Hofer, as his mom calls him) announced what essentially amounts to his retirement from the office of unpaid ComicPress frontman some two months back. Hofer probably knows ComicPress as well as anybody on the planet, and the opportunity to pick his brains about CP is a pretty significant thing for those trying to really tune up their websites. As such, please note the bits in the announcement about “limited events” and “costs” — there’s going to be a surcharge, but in exchange for it you’ll be in a small group setting.

A number of things previously mentioned get revisted today; feel free to review the appropriate antecedents.

• TCAF this year was, by all accounts, a smashing success, and coming only one year after the previous bi-annual iterations, it was a bonus smashing success. Now the official recap is up, and the decision has been made — the one year interval experiment was concluded satisfactorily, and “for the forseeable future”, TCAF will be an annual event. Well done festival director and co-founder Christopher Butcher, with an extra set of thanks to the show’s many dedicated volunteers.
• Flight remains the definitive comics anthology series in the modern era; founded by small-press and webcomics creators, run by Kazu Kibuishi and Kean Soo, it’s always been of the highest quality and featured the prettiest pictures. The news that the eighth volume of Flight would be the last was bitter, but things can’t go on forever. The penultimate volume (that’s fancy words for “number seven”) now has previews available for your perusal in advance of its release at San Diego Comic Con.
• One may recall a discussion on ideas posited a while back by Olaf Moriarty Solstrand, with the basic thesis that ideas come all the time — it’s the ability (or drive) to execute on them that matters. To underscore the point, Solstrand took the opportunity to come up with 100 comics ideas in 100 days. You know where this is going; from Solstrand yesterday:
  

  [J]ust a quick update — the “100 ideas in 100 days” project over at olafsolstrand.no I tipped you about three months ago is now over. Today is day 100, and idea #100 was published half an hour ago.

  The quality varies, but I had expected that — and I managed to complete the project before the set deadline, so in my book this qualifies as a success.

  Solstrand is being modest — pretty much any of the ideas he’s presented (to you! for free!) could be used to build a pretty extensive story on. Let this now be the definite point where the Where do you get your ideas from? question is officially retired. You make ’em up, and if you’re not thrilled with it, you make up another. But how do I come up with them in the first place? You’ve got your answer, next question. But Next!

• Finally, a followup on a small drama of love that played out in the pages of Dinosaur Comics. Girl meets Boy on the Tube because of DC shirts, falls madly in interested, but neglects to get his name. Girl is leaving London in two weeks. Girl writes to Ryan North for assistance. Ryan publishes Girl’s story, and gets results. Boy has a girlfriend already, but at least Girl doesn’t have to wonder what might have been. Ryan wonders — even though this pairing that he facilitated didn’t work out, how else might he spread the love?

  Answer: Tomorrow, Friday, is the first ever “Feel Free To Say Hi If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, Woooooo!” [emphasis original]:

  If you’re single and you’d like to meet someone who maybe reads the same comic as you, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. If you’ve got one of my shirts, wear it, and if you don’t have one, you can keep an eye out for someone who does! And if something awesome does happen, please email me about it: it’d be totally amazing if everything works out.

  Okay, so the problem is – what if you’re happily in a monogamous relationship or if you’re NOT looking for anyone or whatever? You can not wear your shirt tomorrow, or if you do, you can politely let folks down easy as I’m sure you’re used to doing, and I say this because every reader of my comic I’ve ever met is attractive. Not even a joke there. It’s kinda crazy. [emphasis original]

  So there you go — choose your wardrobe tomorrow carefully, and go out and make some friends!

If everybody’s done Scott Pilgrimizing themselves, I have a few items that you may be interested in.

• In addition to Bryan Lee O’Malley conquering the world of cinematic entertainment, there’s another comicky big-screen entertainment due in a week or so, and this one also has some webcomics connections. Your friend and mine, Dave Roman, was pretty intimately involved with Avatar during his stint with Nickelodeon and their self-named (and now sadly defunct) magazine.

  As such, Roman was a perfect choice to co-script (although not draw — he’s a busy guy) the movie adaptation manga/graphic novel/whatever you want to call it. It released yesterday, and Dave (with co-writer Alison Wilgus and artist Joon Choi) will be doing a small tour in the Greater New York City mediasphere.

  Weirdly, a couple of these appearances will be at Nordstrom stores in northern New Jersey — and Nordstrom doesn’t carry books, much less comics. But there will also be an appearance at Kinokuniya in Manhattan, which makes more sense and happens to be around the corner from my place of employment. The mall part of the tour takes place this weekend, and the Kinokuniya part on Friday, 2 July.

• Due out today, Girl Genius Vol 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, covering comics from January 2009 to last December. Shockingly, going through my own notes, I appear to have neglected to pre-order this one, and so must render Professors Foglio and Foglio their due with a purchase this afternoon; equally shocking, I appear to have missed ordering some other books that I should have, which means they won’t be showing up in my mailbox anytime soon, and I’ll be handing some cash money to some creators in San Diego.
• Non-book related: the gang over at Snowflakes (still your best choice for wedgies, swirlies, CPR, and other Viking-related violence perpetrated by children, upon children) are running a contest. Simply print off one (or both) of two promo posters and place it someplace prominent (hint: Midtown Manhattan is covered with construction barriers with completely ineffectual POST NO BILLS warnings) and submit photo proof of your efforts. Best two entries (in the opinion of the judges) will win the original art from the posters and a signed color print.

About eight different things ranking from medium-low to apocalyptic on the crappitude scale have made themselves known to me in the past 18 hours or so; so I’m apologizing in advance if my copy-editing isn’t up to standard. It’s just one of those days.

• Speaking of eight different things, octopuses have eight arms, and I’m told that they make a tasty pie filling. No, wait, tentacle pie is disgusting, but Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars In Brooklyn releases today, and that’s the opposite of a terrible thing. Meredith Gran is celebrating with a book release party in Seattle tonight, will be at home base Dunning-Kruger Solutions LTD for a signing tomorrow night, and embarks on her cross-continent book tour pretty immediately thereafter.

  At various stops along the way, she’ll be in the company of Erika Moen, Aaron Diaz, David Malki !, Kris Straub, KC Green, Josh Lesnick, David McGuire, R Stevens, and many more creators, most of whom will have their own book-like wares in exchange for your cash money.

• I have it on good authority that Cameron Stewart is asked an average of eight times an hour if he’s the brother of Twilight starlet Kristen Stewart. After a year and a half of this nonsense, one can understand exactly origin of the dark, troubling encounters that the hero of Sin Titulo. In fact, the latest update is allegedly drawn directly from Stewart’s own reaction to hearing that question for the 8000th time.

  Oh, yeah, and it’s also the 100th update chock full o’ moody, noir goodness; hopefully Sin Titulo will not be too interrupted by the mystery project that he and studiomate Karl Kerschl have been hinting at. Then again, the fact that Stewart does such amazing work in and around the paying gigs (including such high-profile assignments as drawing Batman) and delivers it to my eyeballs for free means I should probably be grateful for whatever happens to arrive.

So perhaps you will indulge me if this is brief?

• Really good 4th of July cookout beer fund goes to Kris Straub of Starslip, and a mess of Project Wonderful ads to DM Jeftinija of Legostar Galactica, courtesy of Snakehead Games.
• Speaking of Mr Straub, How To Make Webcomics by the Halfpixel Crüe is going back to press for a third printing, with a total of 10,000 copies sold so far. Nicely done, lads.
• Everything Dies #3 by Box Brown (I bought numbers 1 and 2 at MoCCA this year, and they were great) is now available. Enjoy more Buddhist thinkery and religious folklore of all sorts.
• One of the things I really like about webcomickry is how it pulls creators together on a geographic basis — Central Massachussets, North Carolina, New Jersey, Portland, and other places have social communities built around webcomicking and drinking, and now we can add St Louis, MO to the list. STL Webcomics is a blog/clearinghouse for those in the region, with undoubtedly more such enterprises in the future.

Yeah, not really any closer to easily working today. Here’s some things that I wanted to talk about yesterday.

• Kinokofry is characterized by really large, painterly, whimsical — almost delicate — vertically-oriented strips with labor-intensive-looking art. Also, pastel bugs & mushroom folk. Rebecca Clements would do well to crank out more than one of these every couple weeks, so for her to have hit the fabled 100 updates mark is perhaps a teensy bit more of an accomplishment than for another strip (and that’s before we mention that Clements lives and draws in Melbourne, which puts her at a remove from many of her colleagues). Everybody feel good for Rebecca!
• Speaking of webcomics à la antipodes, Ryan Armand’s Kiwis By Beat! (see, because Kiwis come from New Zealand and that’s near Australia and … never mind) store has something you want and/or need. It’s Great (volume one), the story of striving, excelling, beating up goons with a chair, and ramen. Highly recommended.
• Raina Telgemeier continues to kick ass and take names with SMILE, which has just been named to the short list for this year’s Boston Globe/Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature; basically, it’s one of two runners-up to the winner of the nonfiction category in this esteemed and highly respected awards series (awarded annually since 1967). But the real news makes Telgemeier’s accomplishment all the more impressive:
  

  This is the first time a graphic novel has made it onto the list.

  Think of every graphic novel that’s been aimed at (or appropriate for) younger readers, ever, in the history of the medium; they didn’t get he recognition that’s been afforded to SMILE. My guess? It won’t be another 43 years before we see the second graphic novel honored, nor before it takes the top award. Well done, Ms Telgemeier.

• Finally, break out the sewing machines and prosthetic limbs; free stuff for [p]re-enacting Dresden Codak comics.

Carly Monardo’s Webcomic Auction for the Gulf Coast continues to garner steam, with the contributors list roughly doubling in the past 24 hours. Contributions of original art will be accepted through the end of the month, with the auction currently slated for the first week of July.

• Meredith Gran has a book coming out any day now, and the release party will kick off the Spring Signing Tour of America (and a Tiny Bit of Canada) on 22 June in Seattle. 7 – 9pm, Comics Dungeon, NE 45th St in Seattle, with Erika Moen as special co-celebrant.

  The tour then moves to Portland on the 23rd, as Gran and Moen return home, hang with fellow Stumptowner (and Latin Heartthrob) Aaron Diaz, as KrisDavid MalkiStraub ! drop by to play Book Me Harder at the same time. Details and RSVP on the Facebook page.

  The fun will hit other cities as the summer progresses, including Toronto’s The Beguiling, culminating in a triumphant arrival at SDCC. Have pity on her as the miles and list of cities grows, and maybe bring her some healthy snacks or fruit?

• Seen the list of guests for first-iteration con Intervention lately? The phrase “leaps and bounds” comes to mind, and one should note that the first round of Artist’s Alley applications is closing this week. There’s at least 25 tables up for grabs, with the possibility of more being added.

  Keep in mind that Intervention is being held same weekend and about a mile from SPX, so the nexus of [web]comics types in town that weekend will be truly staggering.

• And finally, today’s sign that the Apocalypse is nigh: life imitates art, or at least actual humans imitate Ray Smuckles. Cartilage Head preserve us.

Editor’s note: Books today — for the most part, the three volumes that make up Jon Rosenberg‘s The Infinite Pendergast Cycle: Infinite Typewriters, The Corndog Imperative, and Showcase Showdown. In the interests of full disclosure, Rosenberg is the one that bribed me to start this blog back in 2005 and remained its publisher for the next six months; additionally, I am directly responsible for Hell being located at exit 9C, and possibly other gags that appear in the stories.

I’ve held off on talking about the first two volumes of Rosenberg’s magnum opus as they were released over the past year, figuring that the overall story demanded an overall consideration. On the one hand, this was a good plan, re-reading some 29 months worth of strips (from here to here, or 819 updates across 27 separate story arcs), seeing all the pieces that Rosenberg set in motion (sometimes years before the strips in these collections ran).

On the other hand, Rosenberg practices a particularly fluid kind of storytelling, meaning that just about any of those arcs can (with a bit of backfill) provide a hearty laugh-chuckle without having read a dozen years worth of strips. In fact, the boundaries of the strips in the books can be hard to identify — open a page at random, and try to figure out which panels appeared originally on one day, and which on the next, if you can. For the most part, these discrete chunks flow as a single, continuous narrative, although that’s not how they were originally designed.

Rosenberg has story beats mapped out that he wants to hit before the big wrap-up — in this way, it’s almost the opposite of Karl Kerschl’s freeform, improvisatory approach to Charles Christopher, and even if the entire story isn’t constructed at any one time, the whole outline of it is in his skull. But when an idea strikes his fancy, he has the flexibility to follow it where it might lead. Much like Jeff Smith found a throwaway gag demanded to be expanded upon (and became probably the most popular storyline in BONE), Rosenberg might hear a digression (over beer, no doubt) on facial-hair competition and Japanese snack foods and bingo: The Great Moustache Fight.

It doesn’t get us any closer to the ultimate goal of the story than the 78 strips of Good Hitler movie installments, but dang if the digressions don’t make us not care that we aren’t getting closer (negative … double negative … triple … yes, that’s right). That ultimate goal, by the bye? The universe is going to end due to a programming error. Unfortunately, solving other problems (demonic telepath wants to burn down all reality) has put a few more obstacles in the way of resolving the big crash. By the time the story wraps up, Randall Munroe will have to create a diagram to follow all the perambulations and peradventures of the cast, but any small fragment of the story independently reflects the insanity of the whole, like a full-color cartoon fractal on a three-week tequila bender.

That’s really all you need to know to jump into The Infinite Pendergast Cycle anyplace you like. It’s funny, it’s crazy in the best ways, and it moves from place to place with such chaotic speed and grace as to defy conventional description. It’s not gag-a-day, it’s not a graphic novel, it’s not hard sci-fi, it’s not straight humor, it’s not all-ages safe, it’s not unchallenging with respect to the nature of reality here on the streets of Manhattan Three. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have three books I need to read again.

• But before I do, a quick note: I can only hope that all future TopatoCo book releases have a fake dustjacket option. That would be so rad.

Spent a couple hours running down what appeared to be a virus on my computer before I figured out that somebody had messed with a DNS server upstream, and that’s why trying to browse to google.com (but not www.google.com) was redirecting browsers in my office to a crappy social network with a history of such stunts. So frustrating when people make the active to decision to suck.

• Speaking of sucking, got a rough story to share with you. Indigo Kelleigh does some pretty neat comics, including Ellie Connelly and the pretty awesome 8-bit Tarot deck. Long, unfortunate story short, Kelleigh’s in a financial bind and is liquidating his entire stock of merch at below-cost. Long story slightly longer, it’s in anticipation of bankruptcy. Long story fully told at Kelleigh’s site, which should probably be taken as a companion piece with Brad Guigar’s thoughts on preparing for retirement [subscription required], which doubles as a cushion for financial ups and downs.
• Let’s get to the non-suck, shall we? Kids Read Comics kicks off this weekend in Dearborn, MI, with a stack of guests including webcomics own Raina Telgemeier & Dave Roman, John Green, Krishna Sadasivam, and organized by the people behind the Art & Story podcast. Upper Midwesterners, go check it out.
• Those of you that haven’t ordered Karl Kerschl’s first collection of Abominable Charles Christopher, you’re doing yourselves a disservice. For what was originally designed by Kerschl as an exercise in spontaneous creation (no plotting ahead, no sketching, just sit down on Wednesday and draw whatever popped into his head), there’s a remarkably rich narrative that doesn’t reveal itself easily when going update-by-update.

  Sure, you could read the strips online, but there’s been some judicious re-arrangement, leading to stronger story arcs interleaved with one another. My favorite arc, curiously, isn’t about the big guy, or even Vivol and Moon Bear … it’s the story of this bird, trying to be a good husband and father, and not finding it as easy as he’d hoped. Of course, she could do worse.

  Second favorite: the bug psychiatrist. He’s awesome. But what’s really awesome is I care about these characters — most of whom don’t even have names that we’ve learned (aside from the irrepressible Sissi Skunk) — because they’re living, breathing, distinct personalities that make themselves known to Kerschl on Wednesdays.