It’s a day to be blessed with gifts, if you’re a webcomicker, or a webcomics fan, or just if you’re me. Let’s run ’em down.

• Over the weekend, news broke that Ben Costa’s Shi Long Pang is one of the latest recipients of the Xeric Foundation‘s grants; look for the wandering Shaolin monk to have his way into print significantly eased by the award. Hooray!
• Also over the weekend, Phil & Kaja Foglio must surely have been gratified (perhaps even a little mystified) to see that Girl Genius is up for consideration at The Washington Post‘s comics blog as Best Comic of the Decade. Considering that every other nominee appears to be a strip that runs on WaPo‘s comics pages, somebody must have gone further afield that is the usual case in these sort of polls.

  Oh, yes, it’s a poll, and it’s awaiting your vote — you know what to do. Make this not only a victory for a long-form, independently-produced, full-color, full-page comic, make it such an overwhelming victory that none may dare challenge the Foglios again. Oh, and start saving your pennies because Girl Genius volume 9 just wrapped, which means that a book collection is on the horizon (and volume 1 is getting set for reprint in March– in color this time!).

• You thought the Twelve Days of Hipsters was awesome? Check this out: Octopus Pie Christmas Special! Singing! Dancing! Cat barf! Yaaaaay!
• Received in the mail today: an invitation from :01 Books to join their review copy list, which means I’ll be able to bring you timely writeups of new work by webcomickers the likes of Gene Luen Yang and Tracy White. Big thanks to Gina, Colleen, and all the folks at :01!
• Also in the mail today, a gift from Rich Stevens, who found exactly what I didn’t even know what I needed and sent it along as a gift for the holiday of my preference. This one keeps on giving because I now have the URL for the artists that created this glass, meaning that I can purchase more of these to form a matched set. And guys — they have moustache pint glasses and champagne flutes. I now understand what leads people to “register a china pattern” to ensure they have matching designs on their formal dining table. I have found my signature design and will follow this imperative to the ends of the earth (or at least the glass cabinet of my bar).
• And finally, if you’ll forgive me for being slightly maudlin, thanks to all of the creators that entertain me so tirelessly, the readers who write in and tell me I’m doing something useful, and the friendships that webcomics have brought me — these are the real gifts that I’ve recieved and I treasure them above all. Except the moustache glass, that’s better than anything ever.

Yeah, yeah, I usually mix “good news” themed posts with some visual reference to Professor Farnsworth; I just felt like it was more important to use tentacles today.

• Sad news from Portland, Oregon to share with you: one of the most brave, brutally honest journal comics is wrapping up:
  

  Hey dudes, good news!

  Or maybe good news?

  I’ve decided to end DAR!

  Okay, bad for me, good for Erika Moen … let’s get some more of the announcement taken care of:

  [H]ere is my Official, F’reals Announcement. The final strip will air on December 28th, 2009.

  I’ve been working on this project for about six years old now. It started my sophomore year of college as a 20 year old student and has seen me through my first love, finding my queer identity, my first heartbreak, my first rebounds, traveling to another country, depression and medication, having stupid adventures, meeting the man I’d eventually marry, re-structuring “my identity”, graduation, working in the real world while struggling to keep making art which brings us to today where I’m a 26 year old self-employed happily married woman.

  Oh, and I guess there were some dick ‘n’ fart jokes in there too.

  I’m extremely grateful for the wonderful opportunities and experiences and connections that have come into my life because of this ridiculous comic. After six years, I feel emotionally and mentally ready to move on.

  But don’t worry! DAR! was not my first comic and it is so far away from being my last. Making comics has been my passion for over a decade now (Hell, I even graduated from college with a self-made degree in comics) and I can’t see a time when I’ll ever stop.

  So that’s all right, then; Moen is still putting out a second volume of DAR! comics, and at the link above, you can sign up for an email notification when each of her new projects gets off the ground. I’m going to miss the crap out of DAR!, but I’m really interested to see where she’s going, and will enjoy the ride. The link to DAR! will remain in the sidebar for as long as the comics exist, or until a new project is even awesomer. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with all of us, Erika — it was extraordinarily generous of you.

• As long as we’re talking about good things (and if Hurricane Erika decides that wrapping her comic is a good thing, I am officially On Board With That Shit), how’s about the cover of Hope Larson’s next graphic novel, Mercury? Two immediate thoughts:
  1. That’s freakin’ beautiful
  2. I am reminded of when Larson and husband Bryan Lee O’Malley both started getting notice for their early comics work, and my assessment was that it was Larson that was headed for superstardom; I Heart Scott Pilgrim’s Head as much as anybody, but seeing this cover makes me stand by my original judgement more than ever
• Know who’s got the weirdest career arc out of webcomics of anybody? Steve Troop. Just as Tiger Woods is getting all radioactive and dropped by sponsors, Nike busts out a new set of commercials that don’t feature humans (with their tendencies to attract the wrong sort of attention), but rather puppets. Puppets designed by Steve Troop, that is. The video of the first commercial can be seen hereabouts, with another six (and another 20 or so puppets) on deck for release as basketball season progresses. None of Troop’s signature aliens sighted yet, but one may hope … one may hope.
• Finally, it’s my understanding that a new Dresden Codak has been sighted in the wild; I can’t verify from the handheld but interested parties are urged to check for themselves.

Let’s keep this brief.

• Neal Adams is widely regarded as one of the most significant comics artists of the Silver Age, and if you started reading comic books when artists still bothered to draw feet, chances are that Adams was responsible for your mental image of Batman and Superman. And who is Adams collaborating with? Scott Kurtz, on the PvP Christmas storyline. I’ma go out on a limb here and guess that for Kurtz to be more excited, it would take Jack Kirby coming back from the dead and adding some krackle to a Skull fart gag.

  Actually, that would rule.

• T-Rex auction to benefit Child’s Play (which, as of earlier today, is up over US$1.2 million this season; what economic meltdown?). Fine hug-receptable manufacturer Squishables is putting up for auction a fine representation of the late Cretaceous haps-asker, complete with accessories:
  

  [N]ot only do you get a Squishable T-rex, but you get all of the things from the comic that Squishable T-Rex wants to squish:

  • A big blue car!
  • A moderate sized log cabin!
  • A tiny tiny woman!

  How about a print-out of the original design document for this awesome squishable? How about if Ryan [North, creator of Dinosaur Comics] and Zoe [designer from Squishables] both sign the print out? Would that be cool enough for you? Yeah, we thought so.

  As of this writing, the auction is up to a paltry US$81, but there’s about six days to go. Get cracking.

• New book from A Softer World! Launch party for the new book from A Softer World! The fun (and, if ASW scribe Joey Comeau’s past behavio[u]r is any indication, ball-punching) next Monday, December 14th, at 7:00pm in Montréal’s Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore/Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.
• Finally, most significantly, Anders Loves Maria is hurtling towards conclusion, and Rene Engström has gifted us with a six-page update. There is annoyance at juvenile antics. There is the sudden realization that it’s happening, now. There is the need to know what’s happening. There is the fearful realization that in this life nothing is guaranteed, a new life, and the terrifying realization that you can be powerless in the face of something so small and helpless.

  These characters that feel so real, that have loved and fought and fucked and fucked up and reconciled and broken themselves and each other, their journey with us is coming to an end. Not all of those ends are going to end well. It’s still not certain that our principals will decide they want each other more than they don’t. Whatever happens to Anders, Maria, and their child, I suspect that I will end up some degree of heartbroken, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I took off from blogulation on Friday, which happened to be my birthday; I mention this only because I want to mention a present that I received, namely an animated GIF of Wil Wheaton wearing the scary clown sweater, driving the (black, windowless panel van) Candy Mobile. The world will forever wonder at the identity of the giver, although some may harbor suspicions.

• Once again — the power of MOUSTACHE. Don’t mess with us, man.
• Meredith Gran is again doing a series of paintings to mark the holiday season. Last year it was eight originals up for grabs (which often went in mere minutes after being posted); this year, there will be Twelve Days of Hipsters, starting with today’s (already sold, sorry) Twelve Inch Records. On a related note, may I point out despite having raised her game and skill considerably in the past year, Gran has actually dropped her prices? Start camping her site and snag up the ones you want before she realizes this tactical error.
• In this season of goodwill and giving, may I point out that Kiva Team Webcomics (in existence a mere 298 days as of today) has (to date) 613 members, made 1514 loans, for a total of US$64,525? Or if your charitable giving is less of the entrepreneur microfinancial bent, this year’s Child’s Play is currently sitting somewhere north of US$750,000? Just thought I’d mention.
• It might be easier to mention creators that aren’t Kickstarting their webcomickry these days, but just for kicks (oh my Darwin, I think I caught The Guigar) I’ll mention one more — after this point, we’ll just assume if you gots a book or other project, there’s a funding mechanism. ANYhoo, Kel McDonald jumped in with both feet, looking to make a full-size, full-color book.

Okay, that’s it. Time to start combing through the past week’s mail. Have a good one.

There will be a time, probably not too far distant, when this page and I will no longer be necessary; just follow enough people on Twitter and you’ll get all the webcomics amuse/amazement you require. Also, for some reason I appear to be typing poorly today, with way too many vowels showing up in words; my apologies if I don’t catch them all before publishing.

• So, Box Brown has been doing a fair amount of stuff outside his Bellen! comics, with a print projects oriented blog to go along with his print projects. Now Brown (Xeric grantee for Love Is A Peculiar Type Of Thing) is looking to kickstart a pair of dead-tree comics with, uh, Kickstarter:
  

  I love webcomics and love creating my webcomic but I also have a passion for print comics. So, I publish print comics every few month that do not appear on the web. I keep a blog documenting the progress of my print work. My current project is called Everything Dies. I’ve always envisioned the project to be ongoing with the first two issues being companion pieces.

  Everything Dies will feature three stories, including a retelling of the Book of Job, a series of shorts about a young Buddhist monk, and various myths from around the world about how the began and how it will end. The peldge campaign has 52 days to go and for anybody out there that collects original artwork, original pages are available at a number of the pledge levels.

• Still in the realm of books, Jess Fink (it’s so good to do a story on her that doesn’t involve her designs getting ripped off by corporate hawkers of wearables) shared some good news with us a few hours ago, namely, Chester 5000 and We Can Fix It are getting published, by Top Shelf no less:
  

  It’s been a really rough couple of years for me where nothing seemed to go right. I’ve also got a ridiculously demanding and frustrating day job that requires long ours and lots of hair pulling. All this stuff just made me feel like I couldn’t hack it and I was failing at making comics my real job. So this influx of good news all of a sudden has sort of held me in shock.

  I’ve had a hard time talking about this with people because it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me and I don’t know how to express that without feeling like I am bragging or a douche. Maybe I’m just so used to complaining!

  Anyway, if you want to check it out the books are listed in Top Shelf’s 2010 publishing schedule! EXCITE BIKE!!!

  Yep, there they are in August, right between Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots, vol 2) and Alex Robinson (Tricked, 3rd printing). Pretty good company you’re keeping these days, Ms. Fink.

• Finally, thanks to the first (and thankfully, so far only) me–cosplayer, Emily Vasseur, I now know about a webcomic with which I was not previously familiar, one that know what this season of Thanksgiving is all about: vicious, turkey-based retribution on oppressors. There is some seriously beautiful work in Lead Paint by Mike Cornnell and Dana Wulfekotte; so pretty to look at, a manageable archive (it appears to have started about 7 months back), and hand-turkeys. Always hand-turkeys (oh, the humanity). In fact, any strip with Kid Avery is pretty much gold. Gonna be keeping my eye on this one.

Okay, not really. I just wanted to see if I could say that with a straight face. It’s the Friday before a short week (for those of us that go about the uncredibly serious bidniss o’ growin’ up in Ermerica), and I’ve still got a mess o’ work to do before I can call the day done. Let’s make this short.

• Free book: blog about Wondermark, fill out a form, maybe get one of ten copies of Clever Tricks To Stave Off Death (I already bought a copy, so I’m not filling out the form — integrity!). Alternately, use the form to enter your local library into contention for one of another ten free copies.
• Not-free book: Marooned‘s first book is now up for pre-order; if you’re not familiar with it (I wasn’t until very recently), it’s that most classic of stories: man gets stuck on Mars with robot; man and robot don’t really like each other, but learn to work together; killer robots show up to spoil everything. The art’s got a bit of Matt Groening, a bit of Scott C., and (call me crazy, but I swear it’s got) a bit of Curious George in the mix. The book is jam-packed with extras and goodies, and if that’s not enough for you, the first taste is free.
• Art! Amsterdam will be the home of a show by six American artists called Mish Mash KaBash! from 9 – 18 December; one of the six will be the mysterious fellow known as Sam Brown (credited in show materials as “Exploding Dog”). Unfortunately, all the show materials I can find are only available from the gallery as PDFs, but you can see them here. Any European readers who’d care to report on the show, please contact us.

In conjunction with the currently-running Monsters of Webcomics show at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, there will be a special event on Saturday (-day, -day, -day), 12 December, from 11:00am to 5:00pm. Think “One day webcomics convention and nerd-out” as guests of the museum meet local webcartoonists, pick up swag & sketches, and attend writing & drawing workshops throughout the day.

Featured guests include Brian Andersen, Leigh Dragoon, Karen Luk, Betsy Streeter, Jason Thompson, Chuck Whelon, and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (US Division, Women’s) Shaenon Garrity.

If you’re interested in participating (and can get to SF on your own), contact CAM supremo Andrew Farago, who runs the gallery at the museum which holds the cartoonart domain, which is a non-profit organization.

• Pre-orders for the lastest book from Evan Dahm (of Rice Boy and Order of Tales fame) are now up; Order of Tales, Book 2: The Hand of Stone will be shipping in 4 to 6 weeks, will run you US$25 ($35 in Canada) for 280 freakin’ pages, and look absolutely gorgeous. Hop to it, peoples.
• If I’ve got my sums correct (and the graphic on this page suggests that I do), Registered Weapon (once a cash register, now a robot, all cop) just hit 100 updates. Ordinarily, 100 updates is something I’d save for a slower news day, since it’s becoming somewhat ordinary to reach that milestone, but honestly I just needed an excuse to quote today’s RW Police Blotter:
  

  An employee of Buffalo Wild Wings called in a report that “two bears or something are straight-up [expletive] in the parking deck like it’s the [expletive] Bang Bus.”

  Two thoughts:

  1. That opening leads to a viciously funny dissection of the phenomenon of “Twilight Moms”
  2. If you know what Bang Bus is without looking it up, shame on you

  PS: Don’t Google it if you’re under 18 21 37 you know what? just don’t or at work.

Actually, compared to me, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are pretty young guys … but Penny Arcade turns eleven years old today, which is practically stretching back to the Cretaceous in terms of webcomics. They’ve had some pretty serious ups and downs in that time, although for a while now it’s been definitely on the sky-pointing trajectory. Congratulations to them for being the sorts that would push themselves further with each update, to give back to their community as much as they do, and for (dare I say it) respectable family men with wives and kids and every damn thing.

• After all that heart-warmness, let’s turn to the other coast and another old-timer; Jon Rosenberg¹ not only has his second big-publisher book up for pre-order, he’s got an update today that neatly encapsulates Objectivism in words and pictures. Plus, I have always wanted to type the words, Somehwere in the distant infinite depths of space and time, Ayn Rand is sporting a massive chubby.
• Events! For those of you down with tha’ GMT, may I commend you towards the Thought Bubble Festival, tomorrow through Sunday in Leeds? Looks like the comic-bookiest part will be on Saturday. And may I ask why it is that here in the states we don’t get comics events funded via lottery? If I gotta wait to buy my lunch at the deli because the registers are taken up with people dumping money into Powerball, I oughta at least see some cosplay as a result.

  Back on the left coast, mark your calendars for Legends of Webcomics, an open-studio party in Portland hosted by Meredith Gran and Latin Heartthrod Aaron Diaz with special guests Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, and Luke Mahan; there is gonna be so much sexy times going on in that studio even if Moen doesn’t bring Cockosaurus with her. Fun starts Saturday 5 Dec, 3 to 7 pm, in PDX.

• Here is where I’d normally throw in a spy-motif extended joke because I have new relating to Eben07, but I think I’ve used all the good ones up. So straight story it is as we note that Brain Food Comics (formed by the principals of, and to publish the collected comics pertaining to, The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs) have taken an interest in the espionage-themed webcomic. So that’s an in-house publisher grown out of the indy/webcomics scene, picking up another title; from such small beginnings develop massive successes, sometimes. Best of luck to Brain Food, and with any luck they’ll be crowding out staid titles from the comics shops, and achieve total market dominance in a decade or two.
• Von Allan’s The Road To God Knows … is getting a wider distribution. The exploration of mental illness (and the effects on not only those ill, but those around them) is being made available as a free PDF, a torrent, or at Scribd.com; the electronic versions are being distributed under Creative Commons Canada licence that grants readers the ability to distribute the online versions of the book for free. It’s also available in physical form via the usual online venues or in the better comics shops and bookstores. More info at Allan’s site.

_______________
¹ Obligatory disclosure: Jon started me out on this-here blog, and in fact owns my soul. I sold it to him for a dollar one night while drinking, and he carries it in his wallet to this day. Next to his butt, where it’s nice and cozy.

(more…)

Quick item #1, because I’m required to: today’s moustache vs moustache webcomics battle! If Angela Melick actually did what she portrays in that second link, I just fell in love a little.

Quick item #2, because sometimes we like to watch stuff happening: video of Ryan North being smart at last month’s ACM conference vs video of the Tweet Me Harder dudes live on stage in Hollywood.

• Okay, so the deal is this — on the internet, you’re constantly bombarded with calls of “watch this” and “this is great”, particularly when you (as we at Fleen do) ask for people to send you notifications of stuff. Unfortunately, whatever the field of endeavour, most of it isn’t very good (c.f.: Sturgeon’s Revelation). What to do?

  Find voices that you consistently trust and mentally assign them a heavier weighting when trying to decide if what they recommend is worth following up on; note that this model neatly demonstrates a paradox in Information Theory that posits that a frequently wrong source actually conveys more information than one that’s sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

  For example, a movie reviewer in a newspaper that I used to subscribe to I trusted to consistently have her head up her ass; thus I could take her pans as hearty recommendations for my time and movie dollar, and her raves as a signal to avoid at all costs.

  All this is a fancy way of saying, sometimes a voice cuts through the noise and the recommendation is sufficient on its face. Case in point, Evan Dahm wrote to me recently, and I’m taking the following recommendation pretty seriously because his work is impeccably good:

  Liz Baillie, who has been publishing minicomics for years, has just recently started publishing her comic Freewheel as a webcomic.

  There isn’t much online yet, but I’ve read the first few chapters as they were originally published as minicomics and it is a very interesting, surreal comic.

  That’s all I needed; I was unfamiliar with Ms Baille’s minicomic work, but three pages in, I am intrigued and ready for more.

• John Baird’s been busy with the Create A Comic Project; let’s let him tell you the news:
  

  On November 6, 9, and 11th, the Create a Comic Project gave its first series of academic presentations! The first was at the 60th Annual Meeting of the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE) on Friday and the others were at the 137th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), both held in Philadelphia, PA.

  The presentations — two 15-minute talks and a 40-minute round table discussion — covered background information about the Create a Comic Project and two of its educational outreach efforts in the past year, which were conducted in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh. The roundtable had health professionals join in with a participatory demonstration of the comic project in action!

  As part of the presentations, Baird acknowledged a number of webcomics for their support of the project, along with the Guest Strip Project as an example of large-scale (and international) collaboration. Take a minute to scan one or two of those links, and 10 or 15 to look at something that you’re not familiar with; there almost certainly something you’ll like in there.

• Sometimes, email has just a hint of Yay, me!; sometimes it’s because you’ve perfected your life’s work, sometimes just because you went further with something than maybe you guessed when you started, and are still going strong. From Chris Flick:
  

  Friday Nov. 13, 2009 marks my Two Year Anniversary of doing Capes & Babes. Technically, my two year anniversary is REALLY November 12th, but that falls on a Thursday so I have to wait one extra day for my 2 year anniversary (damn those Monday, Wednesday & Friday schedules!).

  Also, I have collected the first 200 strips (see a pattern here?) of Capes & Babes in a 165 page TPB called You Can’t Print Flick.

  Warning to anybody that buys Flick’s book — it is my understanding that Brad Guigar, well-known paronomasiac, wrote the introduction. Tread carefully.

So, the Friends of Lulu annual Lulu Awards got announced, and three webcomickers are among the honorees: Kate Beaton took the Kim Yale Award For Best New Talent, Danielle Corsetto is the Lulu of the Year, and Paul Taylor is now a Lu-Dude, as his Monica Villarreal was named Best Female Character. Congrautlations all ’round!

In other news (and I got a mountain of it backlogged right now):

• Although best known for Bellen!, Box Brown also does print comics work, and has a new blog about same. Very production-oriented, for those of you that like such things (I like such things).
• Last year it was Sean Tevis in Kansas, this year it’s Nicholas Ivan Ladendorf in Missouri that’s using webcomics to support a run for political office; key difference: Ladendorf was a webcartoonist prior to the run. Maybe. Let’s give him the floor for a moment:
  

  In the introduction of his campaign site, the candidate is wearing a mousekateer hat and his icon for discussing gun control is an AK47 on a leash with spiked collar. Even with this ‘edu-taining’ approach the candidate takes on some serious topics such as abortion and abolishing the federal reserve. Ladendorf is quick to point out “The site will continue to grow with the campaign. I have more to say and I’ll draw on this reservoir of additional issues as soon as the artist in me deems them presentable.”

  I’d love to tell you more about Ladendorf as a webcartoonist, but all I can say for certain right now is:

  • The “AK47” appears to actually be an M-16
  • The site is pretty sparse

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if you’re going to put a category header on your site, having one line of text that says “thus and such will go here someday when I get around to it” doesn’t cut it, especially if that section is labelled “Bio” and you’re running for political office. So if/when that section ever gets filled in, we’ll point you to Ladendorf-the-webcartoonist. Until then, this might be his artsite, but all the links appear to be dead so your guess is as good as mine.

• As Al Schroeder of Mindmistress surmises, I don’t really read superhero webcomics (the last one I read was the late, lamented Skirting Danger), so I was unaware that a half-dozen or so of them are engaged in a crossover that will change everything, redefine superheroics, etc. … everything the big Event Crossovers from Marvel and DC do, except this one will end without leading directly into the next, perpetually-recurring, everything-will-change-again crossover. Thus: CROSSOVERLORD, which has included some over-crossing to non-superhero webcomics here and there. Check it out at your leisure.
• Joshua Smeaton got a Xeric grant for Haunted, the spooktacular webcomic where it’s Halloween and you’re 12 again and the scares are a bit too real. The printed version (which is, of course the purpose of the Xerics) is now available for order through your friendly local comic shop or bookstore. $12.95, ISBN 978-0-615-31563-8, or order code NOV090896 in the November Previews catalog.