Got a room in the San Diego Hotel Rodeo — yay, me. You are all totally invited to crash with me except for the part where you’re not. And New England Webcomics Weekend is getting actual print press today. Does this make it (dare I say it?) notable?

Onward. The North Carolina Web Comics Coffee Clatch get a fair amount of press here at Fleen because so many of their members do so many cool things. When they get together, they do even cooler things, like the themed anthologies. Yes, anthologies, plural, because their second effort is now up at Lulu, this time on the theme of fortune cookies.

This one features stories graphical and prose by NCWCCC members, cover blurbs by the likes of XX-man and Mr T, and a forward by a hack webcomics pseudo-journalist. Look for the official launch this weekend at the local library of Clatchers mckenzee and Jamie Robertson. Pick it up — apart from a wasted page and a half at the front, it looks really good.

… seeing as how I’ll be driving up to NEWW and all. But I’ll be droppin’ updates on you from the party fun times this weekend, so I imagine you’ll deal just fine. Since we’ve got a little bit of a breather before the chaotic awesomeness (chaosomeness?) hits, let’s catch up on the ol’ mail bag, shall we?

• You all know Evan Dahm, right? Yay high, does Rice-Boy? Almost 500 pages of really dense narrative on duty, friendship, destiny, betrayal, the Campbellian hero’s journey and such, which wrapped up about a year ago? Thing is, Dahm hasn’t been idle in the meantime — he’s piled up nearly 250 pages of his follow-on project, Order of Tales, set in the same world. And he writes so that we may tell the world:
  

  I’m now in the ballpark of the three-year anniversary for my comics from the world called Overside, with Rice Boy finished and Order of Tales finally clearing the exposition phase, [and] a nice new book on the way. I hope I’m edging towards doing this professionally, and in the meantime I’m just drawing comics all the time.

  That book would be the first Order of Tales book, which is available for pre-order with free sketch included for a few more days. This is one of those webcomics that’s tremendously well-served by the leisurely pace of a book.

• Hey, did you know that Kevin Moore, of Sheldon the Pig/Wanderlost fame, also does political comics? The idiocies of modern life are found by Moore to be In Contempt, and he’s also going to print now-ish:
  

  I have published a new collection of In Contempt strips through Lulu.com, called Hope, Change and All That Crap. The book collects strips from August 2007 through January 2009, [and] features an introduction by Ted Rall and a forward by Chris Baldwin.

  Rall’s been … unconvinced is probably the best word … about the viability of cartoons on the internet (and if we take him from the most generous POV possible, he’s particularly focused on editorial cartoons), so it will be interesting to see if a web implementation of editorial cartooning produces any heat. The usual difficulty in selling collections of any editorial cartoons probably applies — these panels are meant to be topical and up-to-the-minute, and the news cycles that spawned them are now past. But if this succeeds even modestly? Very interesting implications there.

If this were not so awesome, I might feel slightly put upon that I have to talk about Kate Beaton again for like the third day in a row. Awww, who am I kidding? I ♥ Kate Beaton, and soon I will have to ♥ Kate Beaton, published author:

I’ve been working on a book! You guys only asked for one a million times or so. Good news, it will go to the printers soon, and my guess is that we can expect it around May. Hooray! If I am wrong, Jeffrey‘s gonna give me the stink eye for making promises!

Now I want a t-shirt like her younger self wears that says BOAT! only mine will say BOOK!

• New England Webcomics Weekend kicks off this weekend, and the schedule of events is up. Holy crap, you guys — screenings of MC Frontalot tour documentary film Nerdcore Rising! Charity auction! Panels! Webcomics Weekly live on stage! Gallery show! BOOZE!! [PDF]
• A little bit down the road from New England Webcomics Weekend (about 4800 km and two weeks), Emerald City Comicon kicks offin Seattle, and if you fail to meet any webcomickers at NEWW, good chance you’ll see them in the Pacific Northwest.

  Alice Bentley (friend to webcomics everywhere, erstwhile Studio Foglio minion-at-large, and current grad student) has compiled a pert-near comprehensive list of webcomickers expected to make their way to the City by the Sound. Tell ’em I said hi.

• Finally, J Baird of the Create a Comic Project reports some media appearances:
  

  Jami Lee Rosa of Carmine Magazine recently did an interview with me about the project. You can find it here.

  April’s issue of the Grand News Community Newspaper (published in New Haven, but no website, sadly) will feature a picture and “extended caption” about the 3rd annual Comic Making Tournament.

  Baird and the CCP do some good work — check out the interview, and if anybody in New Haven can grab/scan a copy of the magazine for the rest of us, that’d be cool.

I met Box Brown at SPX a couple years ago, just as Bellen was making a splash, but haven’t run into him (in person) since. I’m hoping to remedy that in the near future, but in the meantime, I can listen to him, as he’s been recorded for all & sundy to listen to as Air America’s first Unemployee of the Week at Break Room Live. Whatever your politics, you can’t beat listening to a webcomicker talk about comics, porn, and not going into the office.

In related news, Brown informs us that he’s been told that Diamond will not hold Xeric winners to their new order minimums, so you should be able to actually purchase Love Is A Peculiar Type of Thing in your friendly local comics shop this spring. Hooray!

• It’s gonna be a busy, happy time in the Carly Monardo/Chris Hastings household in a couple weeks. Hastings has that big-ass show with Onstad and North on April 11th, and Monardo is going to be part of a group show at MyPlasticHeart in Manhattan, with the opening reception the night before. Contacted by Fleen to determine if she’s working in the toy medium, Monardo replied:
  

  I will be doing a digital illustration fine art print MASTERPIECE (I hope).

  We at Fleen are leaning towards “masterpiece”. The show is themed around the signs of the Chinese Zodiac, and Ms Monardo will be holding forth on The Rat. Look for awesome photos in the coming weeks.

• Charity updates: Team Webcomics at Kiva has now lent nearly $20,000 damn US dollars, and I just got notice that the first repayment on one of my loans has come in. If you’re not part of the Team, I can now vouch that (at least in my experience) Kiva works as it claims to, which is pretty damn neat. And Kate Beaton reports that while eBay ganked her charity auction, she still managed to sell her piece for $450 for the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. Well done, Ms Beaton!
• Oh, and speaking of well done Ms Beaton, should we mention that she’s a nominee for Best Emerging Talent in the prestigious Doug Wright Award for Canadian cartooning? Why, yes, I believe that we should. Doubly well done, Ms Beaton (and many thanks to Sebastien Brodeur-Girard for the link to the CBC story).

10 March 2009

Human Resources Department,
Webcomics Readers Amalgamated
The Internet

For some time, Joey Comeau wrote bizarre cover letters to potential employers, posting them for all to enjoy under the heading Overqualified. This collection has now become the centerpiece of a novel told through job-application letters. Said novel is now available for your purchase and enjoyment.

Stand up for our country!,

Gary Tyrrell
Editor, Fleen.com
Penthouse Suite,
The Fleenplex

PS: There is a new video lecture from Howard Tayler on the topics of talent, hard work, practice, and artistic success. Naturally, “luck” also comprises a major part of success, with handy object lesson in the form of audio engineers that completely bork the audiotrack of the lecture. It is a considerable lecture, split into four parts, and worthy of your consideration.

PPS: I am left with a question for your most kind consideration: Does anything mark you as a bigger jerk than wearing a monocle? Savannah & Georgia is a Southern gothic murder/mystery story in webcomic form (by Eliza Frye, creator of The Lady’s Murder and other comics) that has only just started, and I already hated the character of Grey from the moment he appeared on page 1. Subsequent appearances have not softened my opinion (and I must say, I dislike him more than just the monocle can explain), and I want bad things to happen to him.

PPPS: Allow me to close with one last thought, which I hope you will find worthwhile. Joseph Hewitt has lately informed me that Journey to Mt Moriah is celebrating three years of updates with a contest. All entries received in the month of March will be posted (along with links to the entrant’s own website, if desired), and three winners will be awarded an original watercolor illustration.

First off, something that you may have seen around the net; wasn’t sure I was going to talk about this because it’s not about webcomics per se, but there’s an object lesson there so let’s run with it. From Ted Rall, current president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists came a letter regarding the situaion of Brian Duffy and the Des Moines Register. Short version is that Duffy was fired recently as their editorial cartoonist, and the Register has kept his originals (25 years worth) and plans to dispose of them themselves. Full letter under the cut at the bottom.

I don’t know if Duffy’s terms of employment specified that the Register owned his originals, or was silent on the matter, or merely this is/was customary practice. Fact is, guy’s lost a job, and lost whatever value he might have obtained from selling his originals. Rall is appealing to the Register to return the originals, to (as near as I can tell) no response from the paper. Were this Europe, which has a history of creators being able to assert “moral rights” to their work, this wouldn’t have happened — but it ain’t.

Even if Duffy’s employment contract didn’t specify ownership of the originals, if the Register doesn’t choose to give them back, it’s a court case, delays, expense, and no clear outcome for potentially years. The lesson is this: if you work for somebody else in a creative capacity and you don’t have paper saying explicitly that you get to retain original works, don’t count on ever getting them back. Tattoo that someplace nice and visible on your contract-signing hand so you don’t forget.

• From Mark Ricketts comes an email (because, and this is a quote, We at Moose Mountain Comics care too damn much) about a special public service announcement from this week’s strips:
  

  Join us as we attempt to raise awareness about the nasty habits of broad-tailed rodents. SMOKING BEAVERS are a problem!* Really.

  I hope this doesn’t ruin our chance to get sponsorship from big tobacco.

  *If this notice seems vaguely pornographic, then get y’r mind out the gutter, son.

• From Brian Carroll, news that:
  

  [M]y film critique site, Genrezvous Point is going into its third major story, this time covering the Oscars (as some sort of post-world metaphoric Olympic games – it’s weird, yes, but makes sense in context).

  Also, figured I’d point out that when I was 12, I also did frog stories – “Commando Frog” which was a comic first before I made it into a weird stop motion short film later that year. Been trying to find pictures of it all day! The clay model is in storage, unfortunately.

  Man, was I the only 12 year old without a frog fetish?

• From Chris “no relation to Tracy” Flick, news that he hit the big 2-0-0 today, complete with cameo from a couple of disreputable librarian types:
  

  The first 200 strips are also being collected in trade paperback form and will be available by the time Heroes Con approaches in June.

• Finally, nothing to do with the mailbag, but Fleen sends birthday wishes to Christopher Baldwin (who turned 36 on Wednesday) and Howard Tayler (who will be 10.25 sometime after Saturday and before Sunday — silly Leap Year baby). Hope it was/will be sunshine & cupcakes for both of you fine gentlemens.

(more…)

Per yesterday’s note about Scott McCloud’s return to webcontentery, he’s off to a roaring start with a pointer towards The Grimace Project (note: McCloud’s site doesn’t seem to support direct linking of posts yet, so head to his LiveJournal instead).

Short form: it’s a software toy that lets you mix-n-match the emotional states from McCloud’s Making Comics, then shows you what the resultant face looks like; it looks like an invaluable tool for artists wanting to convey emotional states without confusing the reader.

Shorter form: it’s addictive as all hell. I’ve spent half the day trying to come up with a good mix to express schadenfreude (I think it might take more inputs than the system presently allows). Also, if you leave it alone, it cycles through emotions. Creeee-py.

• Also per yesterday’s posting, an anonymous correspondent has a different take on the UF/MeFi blowup. Snark ahoy.
• When you can’t handle the concession stand at Universal Studios, make webcomics: Tatsuya Ishida recounts his pathways to success and announces that Sinfest will be published by Dark Horse come June. Speaking of Dark Horse, we’re informed by alert reader Jake Stevens that their next Dark Horse Presents on MySpace installment (generally around the first Wednesday of the month) will include the lovely and talented Kate Beaton, David Malki !, and Chris Onstad.
• Speaking of books, you can now complete your Narbonic run with Book 6, courtesy of Shaenon Garrity. Your bookshelf could use some pink — it’s cute. And evil.

Um, woo? Haven’t seen much in the way of MG celebration in webcomicdom today — maybe tomorrow it’ll all be ashes and sackcloth and repentance, but somehow I doubt it.

• So it started with Jeff Rowland getting behind on WIGU due to the Topatoco move to new offices (combined with a simultaneous spike upwards in work from picking up the t-shirt business of Questionable Content) and wanting to post something for his amusement-starved fans. That something turned out to be a comic by Jeffrey Rowland (age 11) called Superfrog (depressing fact — according to the second link, when 11 year old Rowland was working on Superfrog, I was deep into my freshman year of nerd school).

  All was well, then Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures revealed that he too did comics when he was 11 — and it was called Super Frog (even more depressing fact — when Hussie was 11, I was at grad nerd school). Then we come to learn that a fellow named Blake Reitz also did a comic called Super-Frog (he was 12 this time … and I was already a homeowner — stop being so young, webcomickers!). This is just getting freaky. If there are any more instances of super froggery, please let us know. Science must know!

• Any of you out there looking to print your webcomic in a book? Jennie Breeden could teach a master class in the pros and cons of various models, on account of I think she’s tried them all by now. Breeden’s self-published third volume of not-Satanic-porn has hit the shelves (and my hands) less than two months after the viciously-delayed second volume from a fancy-pants publisher. This one includes Breeden’s brush with death (actually, a stroke, leading to an MRI) and her brush with England (including Customs interviews). Good stuff, highly recommended.

By the time you read this, I’ll already be at the Javits Center, trying to make myself useful. Should my fan wish to find me, I’m most likely helping out at the Dumbrella booth, or the Studio Foglio booth (who were suddenly short-handed, and desperate enough to take up my offer of free labor).

• You know who else will be at NYCC, but not in a fixed location? Rosscott, of The System, who coincidentally is the subject of Brian Warmoth’s latest CBR interview.
• Hey kids, have you heard about Kiva? Long story short, it’s a microlending site that allows you to help entrepreneurs in some of the world’s less well-off corners. It’s best to go in thinking, Hmm, I can spare ten bucks towards what sounds like a worthy project, and I’ll probably never see that money again. Then you’ll be surprised, because there’s about a 97.5% chance you’ll get your money back with interest.

  So why bring this up? Like many collective endeavors on the internet (lookin’ at you, distributed computing to cure disease!), Kiva allows you to form teams, such as the webcomics team just formed by Zach Weiner and Ryan North. Zach and Ryan assure me all are welcome.

• Tangentially webcomics: From Heidi over at The Beat comes word that Bloom County is getting a comprehensive reprinting. Were I to take my old Billy & The Boingers square flexi-record of U Stink But I ♥ U and fling it frisbee-like into any random gathering of webcomickers, 83.5% of the corneas I scratched would belong to somebody who was inspired to be a cartoonist by reading Berke Breathed’s work in bygone days of youth. Not that I would do so ’cause damn, it’s the only record I still own and I ain’t wanna get it all scratched up.

It’s that time of year, when those who follow [fill in the blank] produce list of the [best | worst] examples of [fill in the blank] of the year. This year, I’m going to take a slightly different tack; this is not a list of the [integer] Best Webcomics or Top [integer] Webcomics Stories of the year.

Webcomics, like all other forms of artistic endeavour, and a matter of taste. If you like it, it’s good. If you don’t like it, it’s not so good. If you like it enough to spend money on it, it’s really damn good and a creator loves you in proportion to your financial largesse. So we’ll be breaking down what I thought was good enough to spend money on this year, which is representative of nothing more than my personal tastes; map them to yours as you wish. And before somebody points it out, even this is a flawed model, since my purchases tend toward certain items (original art) and away from others(bumper stickers). Finally, we’ll note that these aren’t necessarily books first published in 2008, just ones that I bought in 2008.

Webcomics Books That Gary Liked Enough To Buy In 2008

• The Great Outdoor Fight and The Achewood Cookbook
• Digger volumes 2 and 3
• Do Not Eat
• Dr McNinja: Surgical Strike
• The Fart Party
• FreakAngels
• Girl Genius volume 7
• Girls With Slingshots volumes 1 and 2
• How To Make Webcomics
• Jellaby
• Moresukine
• Octopus Pie: A Brownstone Companion
• Penny Arcade volume 5
• Ahoy Hoy!
• Set It To Awesome
• Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars
• Pugs: Gods Little Weirdos and Nerds On Parade
• Silent Kimbly: Clip Art
• Starslip Crisis volume 2 and Chainsawsuit
• Templar, AZ: The Great Outdoors and The Mob Goes Wild
• Wondermark: Beards of our Forefathers

Books That Gary Would Have Spent Money On In 2008 But The Authors Kindly Gave Him A Free Copy

• The Book of Biff #3
• Zot!: The Complete Black & White Collection

Book That Gary Can’t Count In Either Of The Prior Two Categories Because He Contributed To It

• Unshelved: Frequently Asked Questions

Books That Don’t Tie Directly To Webcomics But Are By Webcomics Creators And Worthy Of Your Consideration

• Chiggers
• Secrets & Lies

Books That Rumor Has It Are Alleged To Be Released Next Week And Thus May Sneak Into Calendar Year 2008

• The Devils Panties volume 2
• Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation

Book That Gary Wishes Would Get Made Someday Because He Would Totally Buy It

• Name’s Bang

That’s it for now — stay tuned for other year-end content in the coming days.