So there have been a couple of offers from creators to send review copies of books ’round here at Fleen Central, and I figure that there will be more in future, so this seems like a good time to make public our policies regarding book reviews.

1. We aren’t going to ask for free copies, but we aren’t going to turn them down, either. 
2. If you want to send a review copy, hit the “Contact Us” link, which will send your email to everybody on the writing staff.
3. The writer calling dibs will contact you with mailing details. As we’re spread out around the country (and world), there’s not going to be one address to send things to.
4. Sending us a book for free does not obligate us to write a review.
5. It’s possible that your book has already been bought or pre-ordered by everybody with an interest in it; if you want to send us a copy in that case, we’ll hold a contest to give it away.
6. After the review, we retain the right to do anything we like with the book, including but not limited to: origami experimentation, eBay for fun and profit, using it to line litter boxes or birdcages, passing it on to friends, leaving it on the train or bus for a random stranger to pick up, donating it to a library/school/prison, or tossing it in the recycling bin.

Thanks for your time and kind understanding.

We’re a bit behind on some of this, so thanks for your kind indulgence, etc. Couple of books to mention today, in case you hadn’t heard of them.

Up first, Dorothy Gambrell, of the delightfully J. Ottoesque New Adventures of Death (Modern Tales subscription required, at least for now) and the weirdly twisted Cat and Girl (really, shout-outs to both the Goatse guy [get your own damn link] and the coolest of irrational numbers in one strip? Genius!) has a new book out. Entitled Cat and Girl (The Book), you may obtain a copy right here.

Meanwhile, Tom Brazelton over at Theater Hopper informs us of pre-sales on his first book, Theater Hopper: Year One. Brazelton, emulating the efforts of boutique clothiers, enormous corporations, and professional weirdos (and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible) alike, has started a Street Team. The relevant part:

I’m trying to get creative marketing the pre-sale and generate as much interest as possible, so I’ve also founded a street team.

The concept is simple. You pre-order a copy of the book for yourself. If you can get 5 of your friends to do the same thing, I send you a $20 gift certificate to Fandango.com! It’s like getting your copy of the book for free!

In addition to his bold experiment in fan-driven marketing (have other webcomics tried this? I can’t recall any), Brazelton has heeded our cry to include guest strips in his book. A case of two people coincidentally coming up with the same good idea, or a shameless attempt to suck up to us for free press? Either way, it worked.

People on the internet: What business brought you here? I stayed up all night working on a draft of a new book based on the Structured Query Language for databases! That’s because, some days, I take an envelope out of the box and I PUSH IT. I notice you are leaving! Could my conversational stylings be partially to blame?? Hah hah, I guess I was being kind of silly! any event in which I was embarrassed is now non-canon. I’ve also retroconned my name to be “Mister Awesome”, by the way!

It occurs to me… Today is a good day I think to talk about DINOSAUR COMICS Your whole family is made out of meat, an allegorical comic and comic allegory Dude! It’s SO GOOD. Holy crap yes! I was like, “Aaaaaahhhh!” “HELLO T-REX” What is the attraction to this structure of humour? I think this is very symbolic for… something! Is it a metaphor? My friend, I am simply asking the questions that need to be asked!

Here is a hypothetical situation: T-REX AS CULTURAL CRITIC: maybe he’s got this weird fetishistic cultural interest in inefficient, repressive institutions. You were raised on fairy tales, where there were no moral grey areas, where good and bad were clear, where there was never any real doubt over which side would win in the end! That’s a pretty crazy theory! Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof! Imagine my dismay at coming to such a realization!

What are you saying that’s original? The thought DID cross my mind! I have surprised even myself! Argh! So frustrated! Well, this has been quite the anagnorisis (a moment of recognition or discovery)! To summarize: Fuuuuck I’m screwed! I’m pooched, man! I’m pooched! Being pooched is akin to being screwed! C’est vraiment incroyable, ça! I must guard against such self-absorption in the future! I GUESS THERE IS A LESSON HERE FOR US ALL!

Why are you so interested in this, anyway? Seriously everyone! How come? However, that will be more than enough excitement for me! Any final comments, T-Rex? T-REX AND HIS WACKY DINOSAUR FRIENDS Five stars! Are you jealous of my mutant dinosaur powers? T-REX WINS! Wooo! I declare: high fives all around! FINALLY: HUGS AND KISSES! Aww! Come’ere you!

Lord, I loves me some Little Dee. Chris Baldwin does a sweet (but not treacly), sharply funny (but not mean-spirited) (except for Vachel) strip that my youngest nieces and nephews can enjoy right along with evil-hearted ol’ me. And now his first collection of Little Dee comics is out (temporarily sold out, in fact). It covers the full run of the strip from inception to the 3 month hiatus that Baldwin took at the end of last year. It’s just as good in dead-tree form as day-by-day (maybe better, because your mouse finger won’t cramp up clicking “next” all the time). The printing is crisp and beautiful (really deep ink saturation on the beautifully-colored front and back covers, too). So if we all just accept that the book is wonderful, isn’t this review superfluous? No, because two things about LDv1 raise interesting questions:

1. Baldwin has included the guest strips that ran in May last year; kudos for taking the time to make the necessary arrangements with his fellow creators. One of the unique things about webcomics — maybe the most unique thing — is the tradition of Guest Week. With the exception of Rhymes With Orange and Funky Winkerbean , I’m not aware that any newspaper comic has ever tried this (and RWO doesn’t really have characters or storylines). Webcomic guest strips lead to hilarious and memorable takes on familiar characters as highly creative people get to play in each others sandboxes. So why aren’t more of them included in reprint collections? Oftentimes, you don’t even get both halves of a crossover printed when a collection goes to press. Am I the only one that wishes this was different?
2. Like most authors, Baldwin has asked what he hopes is an impressive person to provide a blurb for the back cover. This one gets quoted verbatim:
   

   Christopher is dedicated, knowledgeable and talented in both the business and art of the daily comic strip, and Little Dee is a solid example of his expertise.

   That was written by one John Glynn, who is listed as Acquisitions Editor for Universal Press Syndicate. Pardon my bluntness, but this is a prime example of corporatespeak; it’s superficially laudatory, but ultimately noncommital. It places the business of comics before the art, and the best compliment it can render is that Little Dee is a solid example. Where I come from, that’s called “faint praise”.

   Regular readers of this space will know that we at Fleen (okay, “I at Fleen”, happy?) have a bug up our (my) butts (butt) about the state of syndicated comics. The fact that the guy who’s presumably in charge of deciding what gets syndicated by UPS (such as Ann Coulter, Dear Abby’s idiot daughter, and James Dobson) is using such mild language instead of I want to see Little Dee in every paper in the country and any of my competitors that thinks different is a moron is pretty indicative of the state of smarts at the syndicates. But I promised you questions, so here you go:

   Why a quote from a syndicate suit? You got an annoucement for us, Chris? Do I have to start writing to the features editor of my paper? Is there actually a syndicate with an eye for talent out there, and Johnny’s just playing his cards close to his vest? Enquiring minds want to know.

So let’s see: bizarre machines, monsters, battles of wits, mad science, fencing, absurd situations, hilariously quotable dialogue, and even a little kissing? Gotta be The Princess Bride, right? Or maybe Young Frohnk-en-steen? Or possibly the sum total of classic Warner Brothers cartoons?

Or maybe it’s Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, represented in the fourth reprint volume, Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams. Agatha, for those who came in late, is the long-lost heir of the Heterodyne Boys, brothers Bill and Barry who travelled the globe doing good deeds and righting wrongs in a world where the Industrial Revolution was dominated by mad scientists (or “Sparks”, to be polite). Alas, the world mostly likes being chaotic, and every power in Europe will try to kill or control Agatha as she makes her way around with a talking cat, a hide-in-plain sight circus of Sparks, and a couple of Jagermonsters.

Oh, right, Jagermonsters … um, it’s a long story, just suffice it to say that they sound like Bela Lugosi, they’re loyal to the Heterodynes on a genetic level, they really like to fight, and they love their hats.

AHATCOD includes material from both the Girl Genius comics (discontinued due to the economics of dead-tree single-issue printing) and the thrice-weekly online installments that started about a year ago. Every page is laid out gorgeously, with incidental details clearly visible instead of jumbling together. The Foglios continue their tradition of being able to put in a punchline nearly every day (often in those incidental details: check out the brick) while still progressing the larger story forward. Sometimes it’s mere moments between pages , sometimes more. And sometimes, it’s a bit of luxury, like this page, which is so reminiscent of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind that it’s scary.

Some of us grew up on Phil Foglio’s work and will never look at a bowler hat the same way again. Some came later and saw that the same goofball wit that skewered fantasy genres could be applied to sci-fi as well. Some just know that no matter what happens in the world, Winslow is the path to truth (all hail). And some haven’t discovered the Foglio genius yet; if you fall into that latter group, Girl Genius is a good place to start. Grab all four volumes now so you can be ready when volume 5 hits in about two months.

Okay, it’s not really a “book”, per se, but the fine men and women of the Postal Service placed a copy of the digest-sized The Case of the Missile Crisis by Jeff Rowland in my mailbox sometime yesterday forenoon. It came packed with stickers, a sketch of a wholly disinterested-looking Topato (which, one would imagine, is his natural reaction to woefully inadequate beings such as you and me), ads both real and fake, and 24 full pages of Wigu goodness. That’s more fulfilling than most indy comics that I read.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had any Wigu installments, so any adventure with the Tinkle family is welcome — no surprises there. Also not surprising is what readers of the earlier Wigu books know — as good as Wigu is in daily doses (it’s made of a 50/50 mix of pixels and heroin), it’s even better in larger amounts. While Rowland is an ascended master of putting a solid punchline on the screen every day, it’s sometimes easy to forget that he knows how to pace a story over multiple pages.

Given the room to focus on a story designed to be read at one sitting (and not having to have a specific laugh line on each page), he’s free to let Wigu, Paisley, Quincy and Romy express themselves in ways that we haven’t necessarily seen before. Add to the mix Quincy’s genius brother, conspiracies straight out of late-night AM radio, and a stray ICBM, there’s only one place left to take the story: Atlantis! (Is it just me that hears Ike Willis as Thing-Fish every time the word Atlantis! appears?) Thus, a cliffhanger, and a promise from Jeff to get the next issue out as quickly as possible. On a scale of one to awesome, TCOTMC scores 9.5, with bonus points for the Snakes Flying A Plane stickers.

Little Dee, volume 1; first shipment sold out, refills shipping next week. Contains 16 months worth of strips. $12.00 post-paid to the US, Canada & Mexico ($20 for the rest of the world). Nothing more need be said except “Why haven’t you ordered yet?”

Amazing Paul Southworth fact #1: He has the ability to warp time and space. The ad for his first Ugly Hill collection, Eyes of Liquid Rage, appeared on his website on January 26th. The last comic to actually appear in the book is this one, which is from last Friday. Spooky.

Amazing Paul Southworth fact #2: He is the only person in history to spell my name correctly in public on the first go. Check it out. No? Didn’t see it? How about now? That, my friends, is attention to detail. The same sort of detail that Southworth brings to EOLR, which focuses on poor, misunderstood Hastings Kilgore, a monster in a world of monsters, a fragile man who’s been beset unfairly by life. Oh sure, on first glance, it appears that Hastings was intentionally created to be the biggest dick this side of Master Shake, but he’s really a hurt, childlike, delicate little sparrow.

Nah, he’s a jerk. Controlling, manipulative, judgemental, and prone to frothing rages, Hastings hates you and everything you stand for. And the thing is, you forget that he and everyone else in Ugly Hill is an actual monster after a while … he just becomes that tremendous workaholic ass that we all know. The world of Ugly Hill, Maulington, and Cornea Falls is a living, organic place, maybe a the outer burbs of Monstropolis; it’s where people live (according to the map in the front of the book, the corner of Prehensile and Vicious looks nice), love, work, and work some more, and occasionally get demoted for such minor transgressions as almost eating a guy. And with that total immersion comes an absurd sense of humor that seeks to reveal life’s essential truths.

That one strip moves EOLR from ordinary workplace humor and shifts it to the realm of genius. Stop salting ham! is the As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly of the new millenium. And if you’re too young to remember that quote, I hate you and everything you stand for.

Ironically, I’d been meaning to link over to Scott Kurtz because I really loved his happy anniversary card to his wife. The art’s more refined than his daily efforts and the sentiment is sweet without being cloying, both befitting such a momentous occasion. Let’s all bask in the good feelings as we lower the steel cage onto the ring….

So! Lotsa drama in the webcomics world today, and there was me on-site with a client that had zero net access. You can read various takes on it from Scott Kurtz and T Campbell, but there’s something Kurtz said that caught my attention hard:

The chapter is entitled “The Seven Horsemen” and it details the seven people who were the big guns in the inception of the webcomics community.

The seven horsemen, according to our “world-reknown webcomics historian” are:

• Scott McCloud
• Pete Abrams
• J.D. Frazier
• Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahaulik
• Scott Kurtz
• and Fred Gallagher.

Chris Crosby is not listed. I don’t think Keenspot is even mentioned. Scott McCloud, on the other hand, has EIGHT pages dedicated to him. Scott’s a friend and I respect and love the man. But was he more influential on the early formations of webcomics than Chris Crosby?

See, we all know that Kurtz has problems with certain … interpretations of what webcomics “mean”; no need to rehash that here. But the careful reader will also recall that when Kurtz gets angry, the target is often Chris Crosby and/or Keenspot. And he’s upset that Crosby and Keenspot don’t have a mention commensurate with their influence on the development of webcomics. Could be that he’s wrong about Campbell’s coverage level; Kurtz has admitted to only having skimmed the book, and it may have been an outdated draft. But the fact that Kurtz in high dudgeon on Crosby’s behalf is significant. It’s to his credit that he is able to acknowledge the contributions of somebody that he’s spent so much time criticizing, and would tend to give one the belief that his assessment of Crosby, et. al., is worth further exploration. Fancy-pants Biblical scholars use a similar technique to work through what may be questionable translations — if a quote is uncomplimentary towards Jesus, it’s considered more likely authentic than if it’s fawning. After all, if you want people to follow your new religion, you’re more likely to puff up the founder a bit. So when Scott Kurtz says something nice about Chris Crosby, it’s probably worth noting carefully. The future will tell if he ever has something nice to say about Campbell, but I’m not offering very good odds:

In my opinion….

This book is nothing more than another self-masturbatory project of the new webcomics cognoscenti crowd. Rather than try to make a name for himself by actually CREATING something, Mr. T. has to piggy-back himself on the webcomics creators out there giving it their all.

I adore the fact that Kurtz speaks his mind — it gives me something to fill the column-inches (Scott, if I get to the nerd prom this year, I owe you a beer), plus, if you’ve ever met Campbell, visualizing him as Mr. T. is sure to provoke cognitive dissonance. But here Kurtz is taking to task not Campbell’s work, he’s chewing on Campbell himself. I’m still trying to decide where this falls on the cheap shot-o-meter, but Campbell doesn’t seem to be too bothered by it. The list of people that he’s collaborated with is about as long as your arm, and he always seems to be juggling a bunch of projects about (one that he ought to find some juggle time for: the front page of Graphic Smash still offers congratulations for last year’s CCA winners … I think eight months may be the statute of limitations on that).

Campbell’s got a fairly large reputation in what is, to be honest, a fairly small community. Is he a non-sleeping mutant, able to be a full contributor on everything he undertakes? Probably not. Does he mooch off the efforts of others while grabbing top billing? Also, probably not. We’ll be able to judge what his solo work is like when his History comes out, and it’ll be up to future generations of webcomics readers to decide the mutant/mooch question. In the meantime, if you’ve worked with T in the past and would like to share your impressions of the experience, feel free to add comments down below or use the contact link.

Now, for a fun game the whole family can play: Campbell has claimed, speak his name and he appears. So the time-to-T-appearance clock starts … now!

Dave Kellett is a guy that lends himself to musical analogies. For example, given that his strip Sheldon is about a boy genius/software billionaire, there are Bill Gates jokes. Every Bill Gates joke in the known universe has been done approximately 2.54 separate times in User Friendly. This might lead one to suspect that Sheldon and UF are similar, and they are in the same way that Protection by Ben Folds is similar to Joe Jackson’s entire early-’80s catalog: same tempo, same chord structure, but somehow, Ben doesn’t suck. In a format (4-panel newspaper-style strip) with a setup (boy billionaire, eccentric grandfather, evil waterfowl) and a medium (syndicated strip forced to be family friendly) that fairly screams with opportunities to suck, Kellett does the exact opposite. You can observe this opposite-of-suck first hand in the first Sheldon collection, Pure Ducky Goodness.

That being said, there are two disclaimers that will have to be kept in mind for the rest of this review. Firstly, since Kellett has a (web-only) deal with United Features Syndicate, the public archives are restricted to the last 30 days and protected by ferocious attack lawyers. Thus, the links that would ordinarily be used in this review to illustrate particular points are not to be found. Perversely, this may work in Kellett’s favor, as you’ll have to buy the book to figure out what I’m talking about when I say that the first strip on page 22 has a great sense of pacing.

Secondly, you need to know that Dave Kellett is seriously in love with me. Alas, his love is cheaply obtained … he knows what I’m talking about. To Dave’s lovely wife Gloria, I’m sorry you have to find out this way, truly I am. With that unpleasantness out of the way, onwards to the review.

It’s obvious from the content of PDG that Kellett has been cartooning his whole life; he likely fell asleep in his tender years with especially good Bloom County strips playing across his eyelids as he drifted off. Remember that one where Opus wound up in a college Republican protest against affirmative action and the students started freaking out on stale beer? Cue the big frat guy with the bucket on his head to start hopping around the background as he shouted I’M A FROG!! Those little Breathedian bits of background absurdity that don’t really have anything to do with the story or the gag, they just set the scene? They’re all over the place in Kellett’s work. Let us count the ways:

• Utterly random pop-culture gag from The Last Of The Mohicans? Check. (page 36)
• Vulcans with jazz hands and Klingons with sparkly codpieces? Check. (page 40)
• Recollection of how every kid has a private hiearchy of quality with respect to Halloween candy? Check. (page 44, despite a rather rude attitude towards SweeTARTS; geez, it’s not like they’re Necco wafers)
• Total appreciation for the cruelty of children and waterfowl? Check. (page 49)
• Ability to channel Calvinball? Check. (page 71)
• Dangerously deranged grandparent instead of the treacly version normally found on the comics page? Check. (page 102)
• Monkey on his back in the form of the food of the gods, Thin Mints? Check. (page 131)

Of interest is the fact that pretty much none of this requires a slavish adherence to the premise of the strip; it’s all just funny whether Sheldon has his billions or not. Add it all together, and you’ve got some seriously good stuff. And don’t take his ability to mock nerdery at face value … he may act all cool around the chicks, but those Klingon warship interiors (page 69) look pretty authentic. So go grab a copy of Pure Ducky Goodness, and if you run into Alyson Hannigan (of course I’m mentioning her again, and I will continue to do so until the inevitable restraining order), be sure to kneel in thanks to Dave Kellett.