It rolls off the tongue at least as well as the its-almost-here Estrada Day (although not, I grant you, as well as Estradarama or The Estradaganza).

• Anyhoo, Gordon McAlpin (my sporting bet nemesis) dropped some multimedia goodness on the Tubes end of last week — if books can have trailers, why not webcomics? And, since I mentioned books, I would be remiss in not mentioning that Gordo’s got the first Multiplex book in the works and available for your support:
  

  The first of the five Chapter eBooks that will be collected into the Multiplex: Book 1 print book has long been available, but a second is pretty late, because of how much new material it has and how little time I have to work on it.

  Enter: Kickstarter and the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome. By pledging any amount over $1 to join the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome, pledgers will help me take some time off from my (wonderful, but time-consuming!) day job in order to complete the print book — and, more importantly, pay for the print run of the book itself.

  These are not donations, though — absolutely not! In exchange for your pledges, you’ll receive AWESOME! REWARDS!

  My funding goal is $7,500. Pledges will be taken until December 11th — a.k.a. the moment of truth. If the funding goal is met or surpassed, I get the money (after a two-week or so processing time), less credit card fees, and I can get down to business. If the funding goal is not reached, nobody gets charged — I don’t get anything. (If I only get $3000 in pledges, I wouldn’t be able to afford a print run.)

  Multiplex is the first webcomic attempting to fund a project through Kickstarter, so hopefully this will get some traction in the webcomic world. (Several musicians and filmmakers have successfully funded larger projects already.)

  To sum: it’s like giving to PBS or NPR, and there’s books, t-shirts, and other swag that’s frankly much cooler than a tote bag (although to be fair, much worse at carrying your groceries home from the market). Details at the Kickstarter page linked above.

• Speaking of multiple forms of media, Mike Russell‘s got the latest of his interview-into-webcomics deals up, this one about Steve Lieber’s experiences getting the graphic novel Whiteout (illustrated by Lieber, written by Greg Rucka) made into the just-released movie and what it’s like to see the process finally finished:
  

  … It’s almost impossible not to let yourself think, “Now I’m a big deal.” But you wake up and you’re still the same [redacted] — and the only difference is that there’s a movie out there that people think you adapted into a comic.

  It’s part of the deal … they’re gonna buy me half a house, I’m going to have to eat some [redacted], you know?

  So that you understand the effort that Russell goes to, these thirteen panels were condensed down from a full hour and a half of conversation, which you may read at your leisure. Me, I’m going to trust that Russell got the good parts from that talk into his comic and content myself with that.

Nasty bit of weather we’re having. Let’s talk some webcomics and wrap up the week.

• I had just about given up on Planet Karen, what with the a period of hiatus before Karen Ellis’s fire, then a long fallow period after the rebuilding, but she popped back up yesterday with a slice of life and today with some musings about Alan Turing. Since Ellis works about a month behind her actual life, the bio on Turing that she read last month was coincidentally run today, the day that the British government apologized for its shameful treatment of Turing.
• The announcement came nearly six months back: xkcd would have a book! Now we have confirmation from Randall Munroe’s blag that the book will be in the xkcd store next week, and that a limited book tour will be there to support the launch. The twist: the tour will involve only three stops, and the ticket pricing is variable, based on demand, and will serve as a fundraiser (along with some of the book’s profits) to help build a school in Laos.

  Details here, along with links to the ticket sites for the tour; unfortunately, I’ll be unable to attend next Saturday’s New York event (apparently to be held in a penthouse in Tribeca), so if anybody wants to report on it for Fleen, be sure to let us know.

  Oh, and side note — the sign-in for ticket purchase (“auction”, really) didn’t work for me with my (according to Google, officially-supported) browser (Opera 9.64), so you may have to try IE to get anywhere. You an always wash your hands afterwards.

• Alexa Kitchen might be the youngest pro cartoonist out there (and personally speaking, a really sweet kid), but I think that Howard Tayler‘s daughter Keliana (previously known by the nom de internet of “Kiki”) may now be the youngest pro webcartoonist:
  

  Keliana as we have long called her in blogs, has been working on a mixed media coloring method involving Copic markers, Prismacolor pencils, and a blending agent called Gamsol. The colors really have to be seen in person to be appreciated. The scan doesn’t do this picture justice.

  Anyway, this is the very first of our collaborations. Yes, there will be more. I’m sure they will get better with time. But this is the first, and as of this writing only collaboration between Kiki and I. The picture is up for auction, and my girl and I will be splitting the proceeds 50/50.

  With more than two days left, that auction is up to nearly $300 as of this writing, meaning that young Ms Tayler may be seeing some real concrete benefit from having my evil twin as her dad. I’m sure there are all kinds of intangible benefits, including a solid, loving upbringing and lots of dad-time, but now we’re talking the possibility of multiple benjamins in the immediate future, with the possibility of an ongoing income stream. Neat.

• Devoured Worst Song, Played On Ugliest Guitar last night; in all honesty I feel like I wound up in a different place than I expected to be. The book was described as containing an extensively annotated collection of the first few years’ worth of Achewood comics, and while it is extensively annotated (more on that in a minute), it contains strips from 1 October 2001 to 7 May 2002 — far less than years worth. The cover features the spaceship that Roast Beef rode to the moon, which series doesn’t appear in this book; the title is the same as that of the self-published second book, but this contains slightly fewer strips than the original Volume 1. I wonder if this volume was originally meant to be about twice the size and the title/cover reflected that former state.

  But let’s get this out of the way — ending up in a different place than I’d expected is not the same as ending up in a bad place. The notes attached to most strips reveal Chris Onstad’s feelings towards these early efforts; in a word, “uncomfortable”, enough so that that first three months worth of strips are in a second section, labelled Before We Were Achewood. The author acknowledges Achewood finally becoming Achewood with the strip from 10 January 2002 and the introduction of the cats.

  (Although curiously, several weeks worth of strips from the end of 2001 and the start of 200 are omitted, including the introduction of Blister — we weren’t promised a comprehensive collection of every strip, this is a curious group to be left out, and hopefully to be found in a future volume.)

  The strips run from there to early May, when Beef takes the turn from being a placeholder to being the guy who sucks (plus he got depression) then BOOM. Cliffhanger. We’ll watch Beef become truly Beef in the next book as he becomes revealed as a programmer and his relationship with Ray is established.

  Interspersed throughout the book, Onstad recounts how each of the inhabitants of 62 Achewood Court (Philippe, Mr Bear, Teodor, and Lyle) came to live there, along with a recounting of how Lie Bot came to be Lie Bot, and a promise of the stories of the cats in the next volume. Also, we find out what Teodor’s dirty talkings actually say behind the censor bars! Guys, it is so dirty.

  All in all, WSPOUG isn’t the book I was expecting, but it’s still Achewood, which so rarely goes where I anticipate anyway. And honestly, shouldn’t that be enough for anyone?

It appears that I got the release date wrong for Achewood Volume 2. Although Things From Another World (closely associated, possibly owned by the same people as publisher Dark Horse) lists the publication date as 2 September (yesterday!), it was not at my local shop. Dropping by Borders, they have the book listed for pre-order for the 16th, and Amazon.

Bottom line, looks like I won’t get Worst Song, Played on Ugliest Guitar for another two – three weeks. Even more disturbing, as I was just typing this, my Freudian subconscious invented a book called Worst Song, Played on Ugliest Guigar (I swear to God this actually happened) and I do not want to know what that means.

But despite these trials which might reasonably be expected to break the spirit of any man, I am in a tremendously good mood today, because my local shop did have a copy of Kazu Kibuishi‘s just-released Amulet Book Two: The Stonekeeper’s Curse and oh boy is it good.

For starters, don’t sit down with this book unless you have a lot of time free; it clocks in at more than 200 gorgeously-illustrated, beautifully thick pages (I’m a sucker for the physicality of books — and when a compact trim size like this is dense and heavy in the hands, I’m over the moon), but may well be the fastest 200+ page read ever. There’s no pausing here, as the story forces you from beginning to end at a brisk pace, with no time wasted (but with the narrative not being rushed either).

Then comes the compulsive re-reading, as this story draws you back and demands that you go over it again — first in individual pieces, then in large chunks, then from front-to-back again. I’m on pass #4 and anticipate at least a dozen before I can put it to the side. If you do not wish to have elements of plot revealed to you, stop reading now and call this review a five-star rave. For those willing to risk it, spoilers ahoy.
(more…)

Which means that Fashion Week is nearly upon us. Thankfully, I won’t be coming into the office most of next week, so I get to avoid the crowds that are dressed in black, reeking of too much money and other peoples’ work. True story — I once asked a cop on guard duty outside the main tent if he got that gig by being supercop or by pissing off his desk sergeant. He thought a moment before answering, “A little of both.” Here, there is no runway, there are no tastemakers that annoint the ridiculous and see how many go along with it. There’s just stuff that I think is cool, and you can either agree or not. Let’s start the show!

• Oh my stars and garters, Patched Together (who have already brought you Paul Taylor‘s Shelley and Monica figures (and will be bringing you David Willis‘s Amber figure) are now gauging interest in Ursula Vernon‘s Biting Pear of Salamanca, perhaps better known as the LOL WUT Pear. Let ’em know if you want one.
• Speaking of garters, know who has none? Julia Wertz. That’s because garters absolutely do not go with the hopelessly unstylish garment known as the hospital gown. To raise money to defray her medical bills, Wertz is having a bash in Brooklyn that promises “free booze n’ snax!” to all who attend. 282 Broadway, 8:00pm on September 18th (that’s a Friday, so no need to fake being sick at work the next day) — come for the comic reading, stay for the medical horror stories!
• Interesting experiment over at Something*Positive: every strip in the month of September (there are two so far) will take place in the same day of story-time. October first, I’m going to be re-reading all of them to figure out how the story’s world changed. Given that the little blue psychohorror is actually being — quiet? Potentially remorseful? — I’m guessing that the changes will be nothing good for at least some characters.

  By the bye, if you ever meet S*P creator Randy Milholland and provide him with enough larynx-soothing liquid refreshment, his voicing for Fluffmodeus (yes, that’s its name) is both frightening and hilarious.

• New strip alert: Like his Applegeeks cohort Ananth Panagariya, Mohammad Haque does a journal-ish comic on the side (Panagariya with co-creator Yuko Ota, and Haque with co-creator Jessica Watson). Check out The Watsons while it’s still got that new-strip smell.
• Further proof that Topatoco is a Real Boy Grown-Up Company publisher now: book signings and other events are now a semi-regular occurence in the secret lair of reclusive genius Jeff Rowland. Next Friday, Little Gamers creators Pontus Madsen and Christian Fundin (son of Farin — sorry, geek joke), will be signing their fourth book and you can come if you wanna:
  

  “We believe we have obtained the proper permits to allow Pontus and Christian into our town for a few days,” said TopatoCo president Jeffrey Rowland. “The police and fire departments have been notified, power grid secured, emergency items stocked, and everyone over the age of 65 has been vaccinated. If all necessary safety precautions are taken and all recommended action items are performed in a timely fashion, this experience should prove to be calm and orderly.”

  TopatoCo urges all attendees to bring along any sprays and/or unguents they may need for the event, as the house supply is expected to go quickly.

  6:00 to 9:00 pm, Eastworks, September 11th, 2009, and may God have mercy on your souls.

Could the final times of webcomickry be upon us? Nah, I’m guessing there’s more stuff tomorrow. But for now:

• Today is the last day before Amulet 2: The Stonekeeper’s Curse releases, hooray! Even better is the knowledge that the series is only just getting started, what with the news over the summer that Kazu Kibuishi‘s almost-all-ages story got extended to seven books (with a rumor of an even ten being a possibility).
• Today is the last day that I must suffer being without the annotated Achewood collection; like last year’s The Great Outdoor Fight, Worst Song, Played On Ugliest Guitar gets the hardcover treatment and what looks to be a beautiful job of book design (kudos to publisher Dark Horse for the obvious love they put into their hardcover collections … their Wondermark collections show just as lavish attention).

  Plus, unlike the continuous narrative of The Great Outdoor Fight, this time we get the alt-text, and annotations from creator Chris Onstad. Honestly, that last has me a little worried, as I’m not sure how much I want to know about the inner creative process that drives him — yes, I’m curious, but on some level, I’d like to think that work like yesterday’s strip just comes straight out of his subconscious, sui generis, without any tawdry explanations as to how (as if it were a replicable process).

• Yesterday was the last day one needed to make do with earlier releases of Tyler Martin‘s ComicPress plug-in for WordPress. The new version (that would be 2.8 for those of you keeping score at home) features menubar customization, author & user pages, a feature to link strips directly to specific merchandise items (i.e.: Buy This Print), members-only content, .SWF file support, links to related content/strips, and much more.

  There’s a reason why ComicPress has become so widely used, and everybody that uses it (or did use before creating their own site solution, or is thinking about using it) ought to take a moment to thank Martin for his contributions to our little medium. It’s pretty damn lucky that his hobby supports your art, innit?

• Finally, today is the last day that I look upon periods as a scarce resource. Look for me to use them more liberally, starting tomorrow.

I guess that whole “seasons are backwards on the other side of the world” thing is really backwards this year. Let’s do this so I can trudge home in the cold and rain.

• If you don’t mind the cold and rain in New York, trudge your ass over to Rocketship in Brooklyn at 7:00 tonight, for the launch party for Raina & Dave‘s take on the X-Men. Everybody I know that’s read it has really enjoyed it (except, inexplicably, The AV Club, who are normally pretty congruent with my tastes, but for some reason gave it an unneccessarily vicious review). Also, there’s a really good bar next door to Rocketship, and they both a) know how to, and b) are willing to shake one of the best modern cocktails in the world: the Gin-Gin Mule; have one for me.
• Speaking of Brooklyn and webcomickers, the upcoming Brooklyn Book Festival is going to feature a smattering of Topatoco author/creators.
• Speaking of creators, did you vote for the Harvey Awards? You still have a few hours.
• I got nothing to link to that last item. Sorry. Via Tom Siddell’s Twitter: proof that Archaia Studio Press is getting its shit back together after that financial difficulty last year, in the form of a solicitation for Gunnerkrigg Court book two. Yay! With any luck, Siddell will actually be able to buy a copy himself this time.

Ever since I wrote that title, webcomics things just keep popping up that match it. As the old saying goes, Things are going to change.

• Naturally, of course, that little tidbit of The Child brings us to the end of Scary Go Round (as we know it), now announced for 11 September, with the new strip (not yet known at all, but at the same address) to begin the following Monday. Be sure to ask John Allison all about the final disposition of characters and storyline, and he may post your question with an answer if it is one of the best ones. If it’s not, you can always ask him when you see him at SPX.
• It is also the end, as we know it, for Sinister Bedfellows, as creator mckenzee simultaneously scares the bejabbers out of small children and announces the start of his new project on 1 January: Bearcats of Mandhu, which he described to this page at SPX ’07 as an exploration of the recent travails of Nepal and the Nepalese royal family, depicted as furries.
• It’s the start of the Couscous Collective store, with its first original offering being something you probably want: Skin Horse, Book 1. Not convinced? Check out this argument:
  

  “Now you can live anywhere and get copies of Couscous goodies,” says Pancha Diaz, cartoonist and group webmaster. “Geography will no longer thwart us.”

  Not enough webcomickers think in terms of thwarting! Thwartage of all types must itself (ironically enough) be thwarted! I just like saying the word “thwart”! Thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart, thwart!

• Via Scott Kurtz, notice of a new endeavour at Webcomics-dot-com — the start of an ongoing series of video lessons:
  

  [W]e’re starting a brand new live stream called Webcomics.com University.

  Our hope with Webcomics University is to feature in depth lectures from comic pros, bringing you their favorite tips, tricks, techniques, and thoughts on making Webcomics.

  I’ll be starting things off with our inagural episode, this Friday at 9pm central time. The show will be broadcast over my Ustream.tv channel. Bookmark my page or watch right here at PvPonline.com or Webcomics.com Friday night.

  I have long wanted to do something similar here at Fleen in written form, but as you may have noticed in the past, I am a lazy, lazy man.

• Finally, two stories that I’m sitting on at the moment; as soon as news of them breaks you’ll get more information on them. But hints? Keep your eye on Rich Stevens’ Twitter, and those of you that get Fox Business on your cable lineups, a familiar face may be appearing there in the next day or two (subject to more important things happening, naturally). And no, it’s not me, it’s somebody you’d actually want to hear from.

But many things to report on today. Please, enjoy.

• I attended the New Jersey Webcomic Chaos meetup on Saturday, where I got the skinny on the debut book from Glass Urchin creator Auilix; the cover looks great, it’ll be 150 pages (!) in manga digest trim size, and it’ll debut at SPX at what appears to be a very reasonable price point. Be sure to check it out if you make it to Bethesda next month. Side note about the NJWC deal: it appears now to be empirically true that at no time can more than two webcomickers congregate over beverages, but that the conversation will at some point turn to Brad Guigar. He is the glue that binds us together.
• Also over the weekend, news of Team Raina and Dave runninng a workshop at a book camp sponsored by the world-famous Symphony Space. The lucky campers were the first to see the galleys of Raina’s SMILE, making me extremely envious of a bunch of ‘tweens on account of I won’t get to read it for nearly six months.
• Just this morning came word that Commissioner James Gordon is goin’ to the semifinals for the Cutest Dog Competition. Well done, webcomic-loving masses, that’s $500 towards the wedding of Gordon’s people, Chris and Carly; now hang on while the remaining 10 semifinalists get worked out, and we’ll be sure to let you know when to vote Gordon to the finals (only four of twelve dogs will make it to the final round, and the $1,000,000 grand prize waiting the winner). The level of competition will be fierce, and we’ll need all of us working together to do our parts.
• Wanna see something interesting? Check out Google‘s new Labs feature, Google Squared. Now punch in the term webcomics. I’d love to see the algorithms to see how these particular items came to be reported.

Ryan Pequin does some awesome comics on the web, including hourlies at his own site, and at Top Shelf 2.0 (and I forget what the accepted convention is for ending a sentence immediately after a decimal number, so I’m going to pad out here … pay no mind). To those outlets he’s now added a short-sketch site, to be found at Three Word Phrase. Starts here, and 30 updates in the archive already. Occasionally disturbing, as in the final panel of the latest update.

So everybody remembers Latin Heartthrob Aaron Diaz‘s magnum opus, Hob, right? Massive, 27-part story that unfolded over 20 months at Dresden Codak, with massively detailed art, essentially forming a manifesto on transhumanism and the technological singularity, and still managing to include references to Richard Feynman and a girl in a miniskirt kicking high in the air (I like to think he’d approve)? Got my copy in the mail yesterday, and boy howdy is it pretty.

I’d just like to point out that for a work that posits (even celebrates) a time when technology and life merge into indistinguishability, it’s oddly comforting that it’s been encapsulated in a form of storage that might be called archaic: the hand-bound book. Hell, my copy had pages that were stuck together as an artifact of the production process, just like hand-printed and -bound books always had for the first 450 years or so of their existence.

Diaz produced 50 of these babies, and later took orders for a run of softcovers (which should be going out shortly by my calculations), but as far as I know, that’s it. If you want to see what the fuss is about (and with the large-trim pages, the images are bigger than on my monitor, and dang do they look nice), come over to my place, ask politely, and please make sure your hands are clean. But you can’t have it, it’s mine.

For those keeping track of such things, there’s still a stack of books from the recent comics gathering that I got and haven’t read yet. Capsule reviews: Dr McNinja 3 and Girl Genius 8 are both shining exemplars of how to bring a payoff to every thrice-weekly page, while still having an overall story develop. Since I’m mentioning Girl Genius, word from Phil Foglio is that the recently-finished-catching-up-online Buck Godot epic, Gallimaufry, will see print in January. Hooray!

• If you’ve ever looked at the list of websites over there to the right, you may have noticed waaaay down at the bottom is one that hasn’t seen updates in a long time; Owen Dunne’s You Damn Kid updated for a long time, released a book (via Keenspot’s imprint), got optioned by Fox TV, went on hiatus, came back, went on hiatus, launched a bunch of other comics, went on hiatus for a long damn time, came back with a live-action video series this past February, and managed a pair of updates before reverting to hiatus.

  Please don’t misunderstand me — I labor under no illusion that Owen Dunne is my bitch, and I don’t mean to bring up the irregularity of his comickry as a means of criticism. Life gets in the way, and through all the interruptions, YDK has retained its place on the links because I really like Dunne’s work and consider myself essentially infinitely patient waiting for the next iteration which begins today:

  [Y]ou get paid and hate your job, I make squat but I like to do this. And that place where we meet in the middle is The Happy Monday Place. Or something like that. So welcome, and I hope you make it a regular stop each week.

  So here’s how it will work. A new page every Monday, with new comics, a short installment of the Barnyard Pete Show, and a monthly edition of Banion — The Podcast. The individual pages will be archived, not the individual comics. (However, the old YDK comics are archived, just click on the text at the top right of the comic.)

  Catch that? The Barnyard Pete live-action shorts will now be in Flash (much faster to produce), and Banion (clueless but serious detective in the Joe Friday tradition with his own webcomic) will now be podcast as an old-style radio drama. Looks like my theory about webcomics being a breeding ground for other forms of creativity wasn’t too far off. Speaking solely for myself, Dunne had me at an all new Nippleshine Manor! Welcome back to the game, Mr Dunne — should a hiatus come up again, I’ll be waiting for your return.

• Know who else we haven’t heard from in a while? Nicholas Gurewitch. Know who’s trying to remedy that? Andrew Farago:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum’s Monsters of Webcomics exhibition is so big that it needs TWO opening receptions with special guest Nick Gurewitch, creator of the popular webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship.

  On Thursday, August 27, Gurewitch will meet fans and sign copies of the two bestselling Perry Bible Fellowship collections, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack. The booksigning is free and open to the public.

  On Friday, August 28, Gurewitch guides Perry Bible Fellowship fans through an artistic thesis about visual storytelling, and will go behind the scenes of comic-production with co-writer/spiritual advisor Evan Keogh. Special guest Michael Capozzola (stand-up comedian and creator of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Surveillance Caricatures) will lead a Q&A with Gurewitch immediately following the presentation. This is a ticketed event. General admission for this presentation is $10, or $5 for members of the Cartoon Art Museum.

  Those of you in the San Francisco area at the end of the month, take notes and report back to us.