So Raina Telgemeier‘s all finished with the Baby–sitters Club series, which means nothing from her for a while, right? Nope! We get SMILE in 2010!

Scholastic has acquired Smile, Raina Telgemeier’s charming coming-of-age memoir written in comic format, currently scheduled for publication in 2010. Smile has been posted as a weekly comic on Telgemeier’s website and is about growing up, dealing with friends and crushes, and the dental drama that ensues after a trip-and-fall mishap.

Better yet? It’s gonna be in COLOR. There’s no part of this that isn’t awesome except for one little detail: the webcomic is basically on hold. Much like Kean Soo’s Jellaby, the conclusion of the story (a good 80 – 90 pages that have yet to appear online) will appear only in print.

On the one hand, that many pages would probably take until 2010 to run (remember, Raina’s got to go back and color the whole thing). On the other hand, I want to read the story, dammit (I already know how it turns out, in that Raina’s smile turned out awesome, but still). So let me just set aside $14.95 now (or whatever we’re using for economic exchanges in 2010 — soup ‘n’ old clothes, perhaps) and start countin’ the days. ONE …

On any other day, this would have been my lead, but oh well: whatever you might have heard of his personal temperment or thought of his various returns from retirement, it’s a safe bet that a solid majority of today’s webcomickers were influenced by Berke Breathed and Bloom County. So it’s a little significant to hear that he’s making Opus grow up for good, and that the ultimate fate of the scrappy penguin will only be revealed online. In other news, today’s installment at GoComics just happens to be the second of two that got me hooked on Breathed’s work way back when. Funny coincidence, innit?

I’m still a little bummed out to learn that Don LaFontaine died yesterday.

• Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars goes up for pre-order today. Remember: everybody that orders a sketched-in edition will directly contribute to Howard Tayler’s crippling hand and wrist pain, so let’s try to find a happy medium that balances Tayler’s health against his financial interests.
• Speaking of books, the mailman just now delivered my copy of Pugs: God’s Little Weirdos, which I will have to enjoy later because the postal service has bound up the package in so much of their industrial-strength tape that I’m presently unable to open the damn thing.
• So it’s reptiles now, Mr Malki !? Verrrrry interesting. Or perverse. One of those two.
• New website for You’ll Have That, as creator Wes Molebash has left publisher Viper Comics. Other projects for the coming year include an amped-up con schedule, a new YHT collection, and a graphic novel. Everybody congratulate Wes!
• In today’s Good Start deparment: Jovian Luck; it’s starting slow, but there’s a definite feel that creator Kyle Sanders has the full story mapped out. This is sci-fi in the Serenity mode, where space is just another place for hard-luck types to try and get by (although what it really reminds me of is an old BBC show called Star Cops, which you have never seen but was quite good).
• Finally, I have neglected the most recent Top Shelf 2.0 offerings, so let me fix that by pointing you towards contributions by Joe Decie (autobio and fiction with “a whole heap of ink wash”) and Kagan MacLeod (a bonus chapter to the self-published Infinite Kung Fu comic book).

Some things you will never get sick of; strand your ass out on a desert island, and they’re what you’ll take with you to keep sane.

For me, the list includes the collected essays of Stephen Jay Gould, Carmina Burana, Perpetuum Mobile, Save It For Later, Watermelon In Easter Hay, In Between Days, Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance, seasons 3 – 5 of The Muppet Show (anybody know where I can find a clip of the “teach yourself to fly” sequence from the Linda Carter episode?), the collected works of Hayao Miyazaki, Brad Bird, and Sir Simon Milligan & Manservant Hecubus, and as of today, The Great Outdoor Fight. Also a boat.

The most obvious challenge in creating this book: the strips collected here ran between 11 January and 30 March, 2006; they ranged from simple two-row strips of genteel conversation to irregular, screen-filling, action-packed behemoths (including Ray ripping a dude’s face off), which seem impossible to fit onto a regular page.

Creator Chris Onstad adapted by working with a page sized to two rows of panels, and chopped the strips into a continuous narrative, resizing where necessary to make it all an orderly grid. An occasional LATER or THE NEXT MORNING caption added allows the narrative to flow in a continuous manner, with almost no hint of the discrete installments that left readers sometimes waiting for three or four days for the next update.

This itself is remarkable, as Onstad has been famously quoted as not planning out his story lines — the characters go where they go, and surprise him as much as the rest of us. But The Great Outdoor Fight functions first and foremost as a complete story, and it’s nearly impossible to imagine that anyone could construct it one day at a time. The only hints that this was the method of creation come from the rising and falling panel counts in the individual online updates, which isn’t perceptible here; a few new, wordless splash pages are all that are necessary to bridge the transistions.

From the seemingly innocuous entrance of Todd (to talk about a genital-themed truck accessory of all things) to the final, somewhat abrupt “FIN”, The Great Outdoor Fight functions as a pure distillation of years of Achewood — the new reader can see the grand themes and histories of the characters coming off the page without a single page of backstory narration. You need not have read since small times to realize that it’s a big deal for Roast Beef to use punctuation. No familiarity with Ray’s scheming ways are required to know that he is not strong, that he is a coward who would desert a dying man. Ramses Luther Smuckles, a mystery to the old Achewood fan and newcomer alike, so perfectly wears his character in a mere ten panels that years later, a single shot of a bumper sticker is all that’s necessary for the reader to know he’s returned.

Onstad rounds out the book with a series of extras that provide the perfect context for this story. From the start of the Fight in 1923 at Ken Crandall’s farm to a selected set of champion biographies (including the cautionary tale of Ty Jessup, enticed into changing his name as a gimmick by an internet startup), to the significance of a black wristband, Onstad gives his creation a weight that’s astonishing.

It’s worth noting that these additions are original, and not taken from the fan Wiki that sprang up in the wake of this strip. Entertaining as that massive (and quickly-created) enterprise is, it’s an ahistorical artifact with only slight relation to Onstad’s world. In a few millenia when they make a weekly brainbox series about The Great Outdoor Fight, the wiki will be the writer’s bible; unfortunately, it will resemble what really happened on the Acres in the same way that Xena: Warrior Princess resembles Thucydides. Appropriately enough, Onstad references this phenomenon in history of the early Fight:

Some had Crandall shooting the victor dead and burning down the barn with all the bodies in it before killing himself; some merely substituted flank steak for the turkey. Penny paperbacks, utter pulp fan-fiction accounts of the event, were widely circulated. There was an illustrated Great Outdoor Fight training manual for children, a weekly radio program recapping the latest rumors, and even a book of Great Outdoor Fight recipes targeted at women.

Some of those recipes are reproduced in the book, by the way; I will be trying the Great Outdoor Delight and the “Dinosaur” Potato Chuds at the first opportunity¹.

Read The Great Outdoor Fight, perhaps most urgently if you are not a fan of Achewood. The characteristics of the strip that keep new readers from casually getting in on the game (and this is a weakness of Achewood — it took me four or five attempts before I really got it) are entirely absent here. The characters, the unique voicings, the utter batshit insanity that’s fully and completely committed to in service of the story are all here. And when you’re done reading it, you will find it is not sass in the main. This is a thing. This is completely a thing and Onstad’s every move is the new tradition

_______________
¹ Although I fear that after the Chuds, I will be forced to quote Roast Beef and for the same reason ask you to excuse a man.

Great Outdoor Fight! In my hands! AAAAAHHHHHH!

That is all.

It appears that my concerns have been addressed satisfactorily, which sets a slightly dangerous precedent (I must resolve to use my powers only for good, and never for awesome). Confused? Check out the official portrait: Carly’s gonna punch you in the face with her happiness! Everybody feel good for Chris and Carly!

• In fact, it was only the news this morning of Chris & Carly’s engagement that displaced that which — on any other day — would be the most exciting webcomics news of the day. Two words for you, Sparky:

  Wonderella.

  Book.

  Pre-order by the first of September for bonus savings, and to get it signed by creator Justin Pierce!

• Uh-oh! Wacky hijinks brewing at Waspsi Square. This is pretty much how every bedroom farce ever kicks into high gear, with the running, and the doors slamming, and the hitting, and the funny for the audience as people struggle to explain themselves. But in a bedroom farce, there aren’t usually super-powered entities doing the running, slamming, and hitting. This could be either very funny or very, very tragic.
• Anarchist librarian wear coming soon. Get one for the book-slinger in your life.
• Interview with Danielle Corsetto, including a rundown on the GWS drinks contest. I’ve only met Ms Corsetto when she was sober (at least, I think she was), so it’s hard to imagine how much goofier and funnier she could be when “in her cups”, as the cool kids say. Since it’s hard to imagine, I’m publicly calling for video proof. Somebody go get on that.

Sitting on a signal from two hotels over, so this is gonna be fast.

• Strip within a strip alert: Over at Ugly Hill, semi-frustrated artist Peter’s webcomic “SasqWatch 2813” (about chupacabras and sasquatches in a post-apocalyptic world) is running. This comic-within-a-comic model spawned an actual webcomic once, when MegaGAMERZ sprung fully-formed from the pages of Goats like unto Athena from the forehead of Zeus. Squid Bats ahoy!
• Emergency McCloud sighting: you’ve already missed yesterday’s talk at The Learning Annex, but you can catch the talk & signing at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble, and tomorrow’s talk at the Brooklyn Central Library. Both events are at 7pm.
• Launching today: F Chords by webcomickin’ machine Kris Straub (seriously, if James Brown weren’t dead, he’d be seriously challenged by Straub for Hardest Working Man Alive). Anyway, because Straub is a class operation, there’s already a small archive built up to the story of session musicians doing commercial jingles. I can think of no situation that affords more opportunities to mine humor from existential despair.
• Finally, mark your calendars for the latest Dave Kellett book launch party: you can get sketches, free booze, and bask in the glow of superhappyfuntime on Sunday at 7pm in Beverly Hills. Enjoy a book totally about the most malfunction-prone dog in America. If anybody wants to split gas with me, we can go see if Dave brings his own little weirdo to the event.

For all the hassles of commuting into the big, bad city for work, there are some things that will just make your day start off right. The heat and humidity broke yesterday, it’s perfect summer weather, the train was almost empty, and just below the windows of my building is Bryant Park. In the summer, Good Morning America hosts a series of mini-concerts, which normally means that the immediate vicinity is overrun with a crowd of people there to see pop tartlets (the Hillary Duff show two years back must’ve attracted 5000 tween girls and 200 creepy middle aged guys).

But today a small, very polite crowd sang along with Feist. And if that don’t get you hummin’ as you walk past the park into work, pretty much nothing will. Let’s see how long it lasts.

• Sighted on the con floor in San Diego — Meredith Gran’s Octobook 2. Rumors abound of a Super Stupor book, which would include the greatest boots-to-the-head that the cape genre ever got. Someday, I will own those originals. Oh yes, I will.
• Following up on the evolving Wowio/Platinum story, we at Fleen received word from a current Wowio client who wishes to remain anonymous at this time ([s]he awaits one final payout under the current contract and doesn’t wish to jeopardize it):
  

  I have a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that says creators are not happy with the new Wowio deal.

  Other than DJ Coffman, I know of several publishers, including myself, that are displeased with the new deal and are saying “no dice”. Several others have yet to decide, but aren’t happy. One guy I know faxed his in right away because he had to. Another guy I know is taking a chance and sticking with them, but he’s lost a bunch of his subcontracts.

  I hear that San Diego will produce PDF-related announcements that will be very favorable to Wowio expatriates.

Intriguing. Once again, if you’ve had dealings with Wowio and have feelings about the new contract, we at Fleen wish to hear from you.

Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991 (hereafter, Z!C) is an odd thing to be reading at this stage in my life. As a freshman in college, I was handed a copy of the LOUDEST comic book in the universe, giggled, and promptly forgot about the creators. More than twenty years ago, I started reading Scott McCloud’s first creator-owned series about a do-goodin’ title character with a perpetually sunny disposition; I kept with it after the initial ten, color issues (not in this collection) transitioned to the stories of this collection. A move after college and a lack of good comic shops meant that I missed out on the “Earth Stories” that formed the final arc of the comic series.

More than fifteen years ago, I rediscovered McCloud through Understanding Comics; shortly thereafter, the Kitchen Sink Press reprints found their way into my collection, but KSP went under before the fourth volume, which would have comprised the Earth Stories. Ten years ago, I was the guy that liked The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln. In the past two years ago, I met McCloud, devoured Making Comics, and bugged him more than once But when will you reprint the Earth Stories?

In retrospect, McCloud has taken up as much of my reading time, over so many projects, as any author I can think of. He created the one villain (in all of the fiction of my lifetime) so chilling, evil, and plausible in his malevolence that he’s given me bad dreams¹. I’ve come to admire, respect, and treasure just hanging with the guy as much as I have valued his work — but here is this creation, from the beginning of his career, that I’d never seen in full. I paused before reading those final 200-odd pages, wondering if the past two decades would affect me and my reading, at long last, of the Earth Stories.

I shouldn’t have worried.
(more…)

Time to talk! Check this:

Villard Books will publish the recently completed Goats story arc, The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, as a trilogy — in the style of the great sci-fi sagas Goats so affectionately parodies.

Oh, my. Villard, for those of you keeping score at home, is an imprint of Random House, and is known in our community as the current home of the Flight series. And check me on this, but I believe this would be the first color reprinting of a story-based webcomic by a major publisher (possibly excepting Jellaby, which featured/will feature strips that didn’t appear online prior to publication). Actual suit-and-tie publishing moguls have reached a deal to reprint a work that they don’t own. They’ve put this into their schedule, sunk the money into the plans and the printing and the promotion, they’ve committed to Goats for the next two years.

Aside from an unprecedented development for capital-w Webcomics, this seems like a fairly big deal for Mr Jon Rosenberg, so we at Fleen did a quick talk in the popular “Q&A” format.

Fleen will be following this development closely. Congratulations to Rosenberg, and to Villard for investing in the future of webcomics. Press release should be up various places by now, but I recommend you click below the cut.

Edit to add: Rosenberg’s apparently been spreading his interviews around; check out the discussion with Rick Marshall over at ComicMix.

(more…)

Rich Stevens’ decision to end the print version of Diesel Sweeties has been the mouse that didn’t roar — very little comment other than “good luck” is to be found in the blogosphere, and unlike earlier incidences of cartoonists leaving semi-syndication, there’s been almost no followup questioning. Those that love [web]comics seem to be collectively shrugging, Huh. Guess that makes perfect sense. Still, if you have questions for Rich, send ’em in and he’ll answer them.

Look what’s coming my way; as cool as the POOP sign is, I think we all know where Mr Yates’s true genius lies. Speaking of Playground Ghostlies, David Malki ! would like you to remember that tomorrow is when Beards of our Forefathers hits your local comic shop.

Speaking of beards and other facial hair, this is the greatest headline since April 15, 1983.

For those of you distraught over Banished! being in black and white for past while, new colorist Vincent Rogers is on board and the comic is re-running the formerly B&W strips with a fresh coat of paint. You can now be officially un-distraught. Then again, Ryan Smith’s other comic, Funny Farm ends in August after nine or so years. I guess that means you can be re-distraught.

I hadn’t heard of Dribble For Kids before, but I’ve recently learned that creator Nick Nitro got robbed of his computer, which included his hi-res artwork for future print use. Thus, two items:

1. Two words: Off. Site. Trust me on this, I’m an IT guy in the day job. If you even think about the possibility of webcomics becoming more than a casual hobby, invest in something removable and then remove it from the vicinity of your originals. Hell, opening a mess of Gmail accounts under fake names and using the almost 7GB in each one works as a quick-and-dirty solution.
2. If the thought of off-site backups never occurred to you before today, you owe Nick like $5 for saving your ass in the event of future loss. Coincidentally, he’s got a sketch-art drive running now: $5 towards replacing the compy gets you art suitable for any application from the finest of museums to the door of the neighbor’s fridge.