So there’s going to be webcomics-centric event at a comics store in Austin, Texas next month — they’re even flying in out-of-state guest, which is pretty dang cool. One caveat: although it’s called “Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Weekend”, it’s not associated with the New England Webcomics Weekend (™, dontcha know) that took place last March in Easthampton, Massachusetts (and will again in Fall ’10).

It will probably be no easier to keep exclusive use of the term “Webcomic[s] Weekend” than it is to hold onto “Comic[-]Con” — not that this is a bad thing, webcomics getting more popular and having events occur around them. Just understand, the original (and still the best) put on by Meredith Gran and Rich Stevens (with so much help from so many others) and held at Eastworks, will be the show arranged by the creators for the fans.

• Speaking of weeekends, this past one I was lucky enough to spend some time at a cocktail brunch presided over by my favorite barmen, with drinks shaken by the incomparable Dale DeGroff, in honor of the release of Lush Life, a new book of art and stories from the best bars and bartenders of the world, written and illustrated by Jill DeGroff. I’m bringing this up because as my wife and I were getting our copy signed, we were told that there were more than enough stories to fill a second book … and a third, and maybe a fourth. They’ll come later (instead of Lush Life being thicker) because of the need to keep production costs down.

  Bam. Self-publishing. In our very brief interaction before, I’d liked Jill DeGroff, but now I really liked her — getting the material, doing the layout, raising the capital, and printing that sucker up for herself is something I’ve seen many webcomickers do, and it always impresses the hell out of me. DeGroff isn’t a webcomics artist, but as we’ve previously established, the difference between a webcomics artist and any independent comics artist (or, for that matter, any independent artist, period) is essentially nil.

  We got to talking art and comics and she asked me who I liked. The first three names that came to my mind were Gran, Engström, and Beaton, which prompted The King Of All Cosmos Cocktails to remark, “I’ve heard of Kate Beaton” and start scribbling her URL for future reference. (Hey, Kate — the greatest drinks mixer in the world is in all likelihood chuckling mightily as he peruses your archives right now.)

  Anyway, if you find yourself in a bar, and a well-dressed lady appears to be intently sketching you (as I saw she was doing to me), tarry a while and have a good story at the ready — you may find yourself in a future edition. And even if you don’t, pick up a copy of Lush Life, as there’s some damn gorgeous work in there.

• Speaking of Kate Beaton (as if I don’t enough already — but I’ll stop speaking of her when she stops doing such incredibly good work), Dirk Deppey managed to combine her with a reference to one of my other favorite topics on this page, Frank Zappa. I don’t think that I’ve ever quite managed to work those two into one item, but the piece at ¡Journalista! is even better than anything I could have come up with, for two reasons:
  1. It combines one of my favorite Beaton things (doing squats on the North Pole) and one of my favorite Zappa things (the concept of eyebrows); the only way this could have been better is if it involved dudes and swords
  2. Deppey included a succinct and insightful analysis as to why this particular strip is so well put together; seriously, read the strip and read what he has to say — it’s like he put into words all the things that were running around in my subconscious

  Read, enjoy, and when in doubt, do some squats.

Via Mighty God King. Just because it’s the greatest non sequitur since Moustache, that’s why.

• More things happening next weekend, this time north of the border in Montréal, as Least I Could Do and Looking For Group bossguy Ryan Sohmer opens up his very own comic book store. Okay, The 4th Wall (should that be Le Quatrième Mur?) has been open for a few weeks now, and Shopkeep Sohmer now has enough of a handle on things to throw the Grand Opening (ouverture grande) on the 14th of November (le 14ème novembre). It’s listed on the Facebook event page as Party – Erotic Party, which just sorta makes the kind of sense that isn’t. Anyhoo, 940 St Jean in Pointe-Claire, out by the airport.
• Also on the calendar, not webcomics per se, but likley of interest to anybody that does them — the Cartoon Art Museum is presenting a talk & signing around a new book that chronicles the creation of the first animated Christmas special, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol:
  

  Mr. Magoo and Charles Dickens may have seemed like an odd match at the time but Americans of a certain age will remember that the pairing resulted in bit of pure magic. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first-ever animated Christmas special, and is now the subject of a splendid new book by Darrell Van Citters.

  With a sterling cast, whimsical animation and Broadway-caliber score all wrapped around Dickens’ timeless tale, Magoo became a fixture of the holiday season in the 1960s, but today is all but forgotten.

  I guess that means that I’m “of a certain age”, since I haven’t forgotten it. I’ll wager that more than one person significantly younger than me also remembers Razzleberry Dressing, right? Right?

  Dang. I’m old. If you’re old (or just want to get in touch with a bit of prime early-60s weirdness, which probably subconsciously influenced a webcomicker or two), Darrell Van Citters will be speaking at the museum on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 from 7:30 to 9:00pm, signing to follow.

• Okay, so I’m old (not to unduly alarm anybody, but I’ll be turning 42 in three weeks), but one thing I’m not is balding. That’s why you should be aware that I am definitely not featured in this. Pretty damn funny (thought possibly NSFW, depending on where you W) and depressingly accurate; you should see the PR stuff that I get and don’t run. Anybody sees Josh Lesnick around, give him a high-five for me.
• Finally, heads up for everybody who likes things that rule: The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs has made the transition from webcomic to paper issues, and now its first trade reprint book is up for pre-order. As is often the case, creators Lauren Monardo and Stephen Lindsay are self-publishing, and so need as many pre-orders as possible so they can afford to print the damn thing. Head on over, check out the previews and guest strips, and support ’em if you like ’em. Hint: You’re going to like ’em.

A damn good interview with Erika Moen went up the other day, and you should watch it (part 1, part 2) because she (that would be Moen) tells a story that needed to be told. It’s a story about a printing company (which she graciously does not name, but is not Transcontinental, about which Moen has nothing to say but good things) that screwed her (again, Moen) sideways on the first printing of her book.

This leads to certain questions that you should ask your printer, including, After accepting my book, will individual employees that decide they don’t like my content be able to veto actually printing the damn thing? and If you have to shift this to a Canadian plant so that I can make deadline, and it costs more because of your actions, will you be holding my books hostage until I pay more than we originally contracted for? The whole thing is good, but that section (near the end of part one) is crucial.

• What’s that you say? Tiny Kitten Teeth wants to do a book about Tigerbuttah in the style of a Golden Book? And they need your help over at Kickstarter to make it happen? Get goin’ people. Disclaimer 1: I have a personal relationship with Becky and Frank, as they went to college with my niece (and are rockin’ awesome people). Disclaimer 2: I have pledged to this project and have a vested interest in other people supporting it so I can get some damn cool stuff out of it. Antidisclaimer: It’s a freakin’ GOLDEN BOOK. What in hell are you waiting for?
• Tweet Me Harder goes live on stage, for free, on November 14th in Holllllywood (like Bullwinkle always said, you have to pronounce that word like it’s got four or five “L”s). Kris Straub! David Malki !! Special guests! I live on the wrong coast! Crap!
• Aw, poo. Looks like I missed something for a few weeks now. See, the “fold” of the Planet Karen website falls right below the comic (on my monitor, at least), so I hadn’t seen the newspost that falls below the fold. Seems like the long-awaited first PK book is now available, and I hadn’t known, so I am very late in sharing this news with you. Sorry. You can go here to buy it (warning: the store uses scary monetary units called “pounds sterling”, which are totally not dollars at all; don’t be nervous, you can still buy the book).

Are you the one person that didn’t know that Octopus Pie updated last night? If so, my good deed for the day is done. Read, enjoy, and for the sake of all that’s good and holy, avoid unicyclists.

• What the hell, England? Jorge Cham, Doctor of Engineering and well-known world-wide lecturer to graduate students, comes to your fair shores on a speaking tour and you detain him at the border because he’s not a “real doctor”, and thus sentence him to deportation? The first comic went up the day he was due to begin speaking in England, and the story isn’t done yet … but seriously?
• On the non-sucking side of England, there is a new Freakangels trade in my hands after yesterday’s trip to the comics shop — the third of the series, released pretty much like clockwork, and appearing mere weeks after the last page of the book updated online. Okay, granted, Warren Ellis has a publisher taking care of many of the fiddly little bits inherent in publishing, but damn — that’s impressive. Twenty-four (mostly weekly) six-page updates and call it a book. My hat’s off to you, angry drunken sir.
• Reminder: just over two weeks until the Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place in Plano, TX. Taking a cue from New England Webcomics Weekend back in March, Texas-area webcomickers will be getting together and seeing what kind of fun they can have. Speaking of NEWW, it will be returning in 2010, but sources say it will be moving from the very busy Spring con season to Fall. More on exact dates when that information is available.
• Episode 12, and the end of the first “season” of SMASH by Chris and Kyle Bolton, released this week. Know what I call that? A good opportunity to either get all caught up or to read a big chunk of story (just shy of 150 pages worth) before the new season starts. You play end-of-season catch-up all the time with Mad Men or Breaking Bad; just this time it’s got a 10 year old superkid and not morally bankrupt early-60s ad execs or meth-cooking high school chemistry teachers.
• Speaking of milestones, here’s one that’s worth mentioning. Webcomicker get to draw whatever they need to into their scenes, and that makes the most fantastical vistas possible. Slightly more difficult are photo comics, where you have to stage the scenes (or write around your latest random snapshots). Even more difficult would be photo comics where you have to build the settings and scenes, but what about where you had to construct the mise en scène not out of interchangeable components, but from traditional handicrafts? Ladies and gentlemen, Amu’s World:
  

  Amu’s World has reached its first year of updates [28 October]. It’s a photo-based comic featuring hand-crocheted amigurumi characters created by my wife. I know a year isn’t a particularly long time for a webcomic, especially a weekly, but I’m very proud do have never missed an update or been late with a comic.

  Also, we’re celebrating our first year with a Fan Art contest. The prize is a hand-crocheted Amu’s World amigurumi doll and a large print of one of my photos I post every Friday. The winner chooses which one they get.

  Let’s be clear — if creator B. Casimir Slaski wants to do a comic with a ninja, the Prince of All Cosmos, or a villainous gang of bunnies with eyepatches, he first has to convince his wife to craft such a thing. It kind of limits how much he can wake up at 3:00 am with a brilliant — brilliant, I tell you!! — idea to take the strip in a new, exciting, hilarious direction because the lead time on a crochet Yog-Sothoth (is it weird that’s the first thing that popped into my head?) is probably pretty long. For creating under such constraints, we at Fleen salute Amu’s World.

See that up there? That is the wedding cake of David Malki ! and Nikki Rice from a few years back. It’s not the anniversary of the event or anything, but Mr Press Release (seriously, get yourself on the TopatoCo press release list, because those things that Malki ! writes are freakin’ hilarious; they are the only ones that reward you for reading all the way to the bottom¹) saw fit to share it with the world, and I share it with you because it is the coolest cake ever that could only be improved by the little bride figure kicking one of the black-clad agents of doom in the face.

• Similarly, this world was rocked on this day in both 1976 and 1980 as John Allison and Ryan North were born (or, as rumo[u]r would have it, sprung fully formed from the forehead of Zeus) in, respectively, Englishland and Canadia. Fleen wishes a very happy birthday to both.
• And blasting forth into the marketplace are not one, but two separate books from Tyler Page. Up first, the second volume of Nothing Better, which remains the benchmark for headin’ off to college storytelling. When last we left our intrepid heroines Kat and Jane, they had just come to the uneasy realization that sometimes the Freshman Roomie Match-o-Tron does a better job than either would be willing to admit; with semester one part-way over, school rhythms starting to gel, and old lives starting to drift further away, the real work of growin’ up in Ermerica can begin. It’s my very next webcomics purchase, you betcha.

  Second, you got The Saga of Rob Harvard, the first publication culled from Page’s daily sketchblog, and the first (only, really) extended story arc from that creative stew. This one is hand-bound and limited to 250 copies, so get it while the getting’s good if you really want it. Both The Saga of Rob Harvard and Nothing Better Vol 2: Into the Wild are available now in the Stylish Vittles store (along with NB volume 1, for those needing to catch up).

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¹ Case in point, from a recent release authored by Mr Malki !:

ABOUT TOPATOCO / www.topatoco.com
Founded in 2003 by maverick cowboy cyber cartoonist Jeffrey Rowland, TopatoCo handles the production and fulfillment of licensed merchandise for over forty independent artists and entrepreneurs. TopatoCo is the exclusive online retailer for dozens of the comics world’s most popular online brands and maintains a commitment to helping content creators worldwide establish sustainable careers from their art. TopatoCo was also the first corporation in Massachusetts to get super scared of a wolf this one time, but in its defense, it was a really scary wolf.

Where to start?

• Perhaps with the almost-overlooked PC Weenies anniversary? Turns out that you won’t be able to see those first efforts, since the current site only goes back to the retooling of January Aught-Eight, but there it is: Krishna Sadasivam’s been using the same characters to poke fun at kohm-puu-tars since October 1998, which is about 93 years in internet time.
• The long wait for new Erfworld strips is finally coming to a close; as of this writing, the site is down (presumably for retooling), but expect to see the new “book” start soon, with a new artist, and a new model: twenty-five pages equals a book, short texty interludes between books; by that model, “Book One” was actually about six books worth (and, coincidentally, will be available from Giant In The Playground early next year in dead-tree form).
• APE happened, and the news was joyous as a sizeable portion of the TopatoCo roster (including all of the ruling junta) plopped themselves in a limo and toasted, Here’s to stumbling ass-backwards into good decisions. Big Apple Comic Con also happened, and the news was decidedly more mixed, with none of the major comics publishers present, one of the two “biggest” draws (Gary Coleman) not showing (that building-super job must have kept him too busy) and the show’s management announcing that next year, BACC will take place the same dates as New York Comic Con (which has made a pretty good name for itself in only four iterations). So, webcomickers — NYCC or BACC, and why?
• Tweeted this AM: Templar, AZ books to be distributed by Last Gasp, which ought to make them available anywhere that artcomix are to be found. Whoa.
• John Baird of Create A Comic Project (oft-featured in these pages) sends word of interest to all New York City area comickers of all stripes:
  

  LearnPlay is looking to bring a series of speakers to Teachers College at Columbia University to speak on the combination of comics and education. The monthly speaker series starts in November and will go through April.

  LearnPlay is TC’s student organization for the research and development of educational games and activities, including comic making. If you’re interested, please contact LearnPlay’s president, John Baird, at jlb2226 at columbia dot edu.

  Okay, everybody else who is not in charge of multiple educational/outreach programs for kids? You’re officially slackers now. Baird’s the man.

And that’s it for today. Nothing else going on in webcomics, nope. Aaaaaaabsolutely nothing. Move along, and don’t bother to click on that completely non-descript link that leads nowhere.

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Per an email I received yesterday, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is doing a children’s programming track at Big Apple Comic Con (which is going on as you read this), by partnering with the con’s sponsors, MFTW¹ Entertainment. You may insert your own joke about MFTW Entertainment producing anything that child-appropriate here.

• The big Chris Yates secret project list that we hinted at yesterday is now live, and we at Fleen can now reveal exclusively, from a conversation that took place over beers in San Diego, that one of these projects is TRUE. That’s right, the yak that’s going to star in ЖYPMblH HEXeP is named “Batukhan”. Scoop!
• Speaking of secrets revealed, this was all secret yesterday if you don’t follow Kris Straub‘s twitterfeed, but there is now an Ichor Falls book available for purchase, just in time for Halloween. Those with weak constitutions are warned that this books is likely very scarifying, and should approach it with caution. Also, please stay the hell away from that particular corner of West Virginia, no matter how polite the realtor seems.
• You guys have seen Kickstarter, right? Got a project you want to run, but you need funding, so people can pledge to you, and if you don’t get enough nobody pays up anything? Think Grameen Bank for the first world. Friend of Fleen (and sporting bet nemesis) Goron McAlpin‘s using it for a Multiplex book, and he’s now being joined from the webcomics world by Templar, AZ creator Spike as she seeks to revive a project on Modern Livin’ On The Cheap:
  

  Poorcraft is a project I’ve been thinking about for years. No one gets into comics for the money (no one with a clue, anyway), so I got an involuntary crash course in the discipline after I left school. I’ve learned a lot about poorcraft since then, most of it the hard way.

  Over time, I’ve noticed people who read comics are often people who want to make comics. But aspiring creative types are pretty easily discouraged by the specter of the “starving artist.” It doesn’t have to be that way! And not enough people realize that.

  So, I want to make a book. A comic book, naturally. Full color cover, black and white interior, 100-120 pages, with a $10.00 cover price. And at least 75% of that book would be comics. Comics about housing, food, entertainment, education, travel/transportation, health care, and employment, and doing all those things on a dime.

  Diana and myself have a six-month schedule from a successful Kickstart to publishing. Production-wise, the book is already outlined and ready for scripting. The $6,000 I’m asking for would go towards paying Diana [Nock, the illustrator] a fair price for her work, and publishing costs.

  As of this writing, Poorcraft has 71 backers worth nearly $1200 of pledges, a little more than 12 hours into the three-month fundraising window. Oh, and McAlpin will be on Fanboy Radio’s The Indie Show this Sunday, on a Kickstarter-themed broadcast.

• Euro-folks! Talented creators from Transmission-X are going to be stomping around your fair continent, and now there’s tour dates up for Ramón Pérez, Cameron Stewart, and Karl Kerschl (this might explain why Stewart’s Sin Titulo is hiatusing just as we’re hitting big developments, dang).

  Anyhoo, the tour swings through Portugal, France, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and England, with at least three festival appearances. Quick hint for the happy travellers: one of my all-time top-five comic shops is near the canalfront in Ghent. Bigger, more comprehensive selection of English-language comics than most shops in the US, and then all the bande dessinée. Oh, it was glorious. Speaking of which, block out an afternoon for the CBBD in Brussels, and check out all the public comics art in the city (my favorite: a reproduction of a Blake et Mortimer cover on the entire side of a building.

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¹ Megan Fox Tits Wolverine, of course.

Sick, people, sick!

• Whoops, there’s mini-Grote … had I been paying closer attention, I might have noticed the characters introduced on Monday and Tuesday in Bad Machinëry are the crime-busting youths of Tackleford; with Shauna and Charlotte now present, it appears that BM has settled into a secondary school story (as much of SGR was in the last couple of years, with Esther and The Boy being so prominent). Anybody know how long university lasts in England — if we’re three years on, maybe the older generation are about done with their schoolin’.
• Got my copy of xkcd volume 0 in the mail yesterday; plenty of randomness in the marginalia — page numbers in various bases, code snippets and clues, puzzles o’ plenty to be solved. Me, I plan on sitting back and letting others crack ’em and post their solutions because I’m a lazy, lazy man (but, in my defense, no less a genius than Chuck Jones noted that it takes a smart person to get away with being lazy). Maybe the most interesting part of xv0 is the lack of the traditional copyright page; in its place is a Creative Commons page, with a Attribution-Noncommerical 3.0 Unported license.
• Curiously enough, this is only one of two books I read last night with such language up front, the other being the first collection of The Glass Urchin by Amy Bogin (who goes by “Ami B.” online), which features an Attribution-Noncommerical-Share Alike 3.0 license. Given that so many webcomickers are releasing strips that appear online for free, I wonder if this will become a trend. Anyhoo, the book debuts at SPX this weekend (thanks for the advance copy, Ami!), which means that I know how the next five strips that will run online will go, because they’re included here. I get to see them and you have to wait, moo ha ha ha.

Sure, there’s awesome stuff in Bethesda, like John Campbell’s debut Pictures for Sad Children book — don’t buy all of them, because the leftovers will go on sale online next week. Oh, and I guess Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz will have a new Dresden Codak book available. And other attendees (missed yesterday) will include Dylan Meconis (tabling with Carol Burrell) with a new print, and Dave Shabet and Evan Dahm getting a last-minute table assignment.

And that’s not even considering Raina Telgemeier giving away two galley copies of her forthcoming graphic novel, SMILE:

I’m also holding a raffle and a contest! I have a few advance-reader galleys of SMILE available, and I’d like to give them away. There are two ways to win:

Raffle! Come fill out a raffle ticket at our table, any time before 4:30 PM on Sunday. I will draw a winner at 5 PM.

Contest! Tell me a horror story about your teeth! You have to come and tell me your story in person, also any time before 4:30 PM on Sunday. I will choose a winner at 5 PM. Most horrific dental story wins.

Man, I have a great horrific dental story, too. I won’t go into it here, because I realize that some people are squeamish; if you have a strong stomach, the short version is below the cut. Suffice it to say, nearly 20 years later I am still fully prepared to run down a respectable member of the dental profession in cold blood in front of his terrified family, then kick my car into reverse and repeat until the cops drag me away.

But I promised you good news for those not going to SPX, and that would be the First Ever Topatoco Tag Sale:

[W]e ain’t no second-rate ham-shop runnin’ T-shirts out the back of an off-label methadone distillery either — we’re the world’s largest graphical internet entertainment licensing firm, and we got literally twenty dozen different designs that we throw away on a daily basis. We are straight-up and down-low professional and the side effect of all this legitimate-businessin’ is that we got tee-shirts in every orifice and stacked up to reach the danged rafters.

Solution? TAG SALE. This Saturday, September 26, we are opening our doors and urging you, a bunch of strangers, to come paw through a giant stash of our clean cotton miscellany. That’s right — the TopatoCo offices will be open to the discount-loving public for a one-day bargain-basement housecleaning hootenanny. [emphasis original]

Note to every random entertainment company that sends me press releases — use the words “methadone distillery” in your boilerplate, and I’m far more likely to run with it.

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In retrospect, my internet at home being nonfunctional (smokin’ hot signal, no DNS) and the prospect of sitting on the line with a first-level “support” “technician” to go through multiple reboots only to determine that the problem isn’t on my end should have been a tip-off. Almost nothing of interest going on today.

The sick and wounded from PAX continue to heal. The great drama and fights are absent. It’s still days to go until Estradarama and It’s Wedding!, and naught occurs in our scrappy little community but a few instances of quiet accomplishment due to diligent effort. BO-RING. Well, let’s at least acknowledge those bits of accomplishment, and hope that somebody has a meltdown before deadline tomorrow.

• Red String — through six years (or so), thirty-five chapters (or so), three Dark Horse books (or so), Gina Biggs has been cranking out the pages and just crossed the 1000 mark. Daunting backlog o’ comics, but oh so worth it to get caught up.
• Know what might make it easy to get caught up? Archive Binge. Since the free RSS-based catch-up service launched ’bout two weeks ago, a stack of new comics have been added to the service, including more than 2500 episodes of Goats and nearly 3400 of Schlock Mercenary. Also on the list since the last time I looked: the pure nerdery of Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, adding more than 2000 strips between ’em. Dig in.
• Speaking of xkcd, volume 0 is on sale as of today, and for the first 24 hours you can order your copy signed for an extra ten bob; unsigned copies will start shipping tomorrow. I got mine on order, do you?