I got other stuff for you today.

• Scoop! Fleen can reveal exclusively exactly what it is that Ryan Estrada (and a passel of co-conspirators) have been working on. Launching Monday, 2 July, all of the projects that he’s teased (and more!) will be available as a digital comics equivalent of the famed Humble Indie Bundle.

  The Whole Story will feature as many as seven full e-books, a combo platter of new and established creators, combining both new and previously-seen work. Three books await you for free, with the remaining four available at various purchase tiers, adding up to a total of nearly 500 MB of comics. We’ll give the launch address on Monday, and remember: you’ll only have about three weeks to grab what you can. They’re in Retina resolution, and in case you were wondering — Estrada’s dropping hints that this will be an ongoing publication channel, so look for more bundles in the future.

• Next up: updates to where to find everybody at SDCC; Zach Weinersmith will be hanging with Unshelved (booth 2300), Bill Holbrook and John Lotshaw will be with Moonbase Press (table L-02); Weregeek and Little Vampires are tabling together (booth 1831), and Keenspot are indeed double-boothing.
• Next, if you’re in Philadelphia this weekend, you can watch webcomics own Brad Guigar¹ perform stand-up on Saturday night. Fun starts at 3:30pm.
• Shaenon Garrity² has launched a new webcomic where she recaps one X-Files episode per week and the first one is magic. I shouldn’t be surprised, since Shaenon + recap = comedy gold, but there is a very deep downside to this new endeavour: if she keeps to a one-a-week schedule and does them in order, it will be early July 2013 before she gets to Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and September of the same year before she reaches Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”. This is tragic.

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¹ He’s dreamy.

² Tiki Queen of the Greater Bay Area and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, non-Ryan North Division.

Update to add: I will be noting people I missed the first time around in later postings and adding them after the fact here (although I’m not redrawing maps). Keep coming back!

At long last, the 2012 edition of The Fleen Guide To Webcomickers In The Wild is releasing today (and, as always, corrections and additions are welcome), but first a quick followup on an old story. One may recall that last month I spent some time playing Pai Gow with Mike Krahulik and Robert Khoo in Las Vegas, and as a result learned about their new Lookouts comic with Cryptozoic Entertainment. This morning the good folks at Cryptozoic were kind enough to send me some additional info, which I am happy to share with you.

Issue #1 will debut at SDCC, rolling out to comics shops in late August; those of you with Comixology accounts can jump on that bad boy on 6 July. This will be an ongoing series, broken up into six-issue story arcs, each focusing on the Lookouts earning a particular badge. Personally, I’m most interested in reading the excerpts from the Lookouts Handbook which will be featured in each issue. Oh, and the SDCC issue will feature covers by Krahulik and Doug TenNapel, obtainable from Cryptozoic’s pop-up store in the Gaslamp.

Okay, Comic Con floor map. You can get the full thing here [PDF], or just use the images I’m including instead. We’ll start with the full floor map:

… and use it as our basis of comparison. Most of the people that have something to do with the sorts of things we talk about here are concentrated in the right half of that map, so let’s zoom in on that a bit, shall we?

As you can see, three highlighted areas are called out: the Small Press Pavilion (at the top, in lavender), the Webcomics Pavilion (below and to the right of the SPP, in orange), and the Independent Press Pavilion (down at the bottom, in pink). We’ll be zooming in on some of these areas, starting with the two at the top of the map:

Webcomics Pavilion:

Small Press Pavilion:

They’re not in either Pavilion proper, but the good folks of Oni Press, who deal with many webcomics people, should also be visible over there to the left.

Now let’s hop over to the Independent Press Pavilion for a moment:

Independent Press Pavilion:

Now let’s look a little further out of the immediate pavilions, yes?

Using the pavilions, you should be able to navigate pretty easily to find Alaska Robotics (with special booth guest Marian Call, oh my goodness, booth 1033), the Cartoon Art Museum (whose ongoing sketch-a-thon will attract a plethora of talent too numerous to list here to booth 1930); immediately behind CAM, you’ll find Weregeek and Little Vampires (booth 1831); the aforementioned Doug TenNapel (getting ratfisty and nnewty at booth 1601); Drawn & Quarterly (one may find Kate Beaton calendars at booth 1629); and First Second (where one may find Vera Brosgol signing, or cowering, or both, booth 1323).

We’ll have to go a little outside all the prior areas for the next hot spot:

BOOM! Studios/KaBoom are all off by their lonesome, but they’re where you can find all your Adventure Time/Marceline and the Scream Queens needs met, including possibly appearances by some of the many webcomickers that have worked on those books (booth 2743). Finally, not really fitting in on any of these maps (except for the right-hand one up above), between the big blocks marked MARVEL and SIDESHOW COLLECTIBLES you may find Bolt City Productions, for all your Flight-related needs (booth 2235).

Okay! Time to leave the right half of the hall and venture waaaaay down to the left half:

Literally at the far side of the hall is where you’ll find the Artists Alley, and in its vicinity, one more webcomicker. Zooming in:

Hall G:

Whew! Lots of webcomickers to catch up with this year. Thing is, I know that other creators are attending, so if you know of anybody that’s co-boothing and not specifically listed, let me know and I’ll update here, thanks. Come back tomorrow and we’ll have the first roundup of programming information.

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¹ Please note that I’m going by the names as listed on the SDCC site, which means that I don’t necessarily know if somebody is booth-sharing if they’re not listed under their own name. Corrections cheerfully accepted. title=Click to see the section of the floor where you

San Diego Comic Con has gotten an exhibitor’s list/map posted, which we at Fleen will be poring over to find persons and places of interest to the sort of person that reads this page. Honestly, I’m not sure if this is dropping with less lead time than in prior years (and I’m too lazy to go check), but it sure feels like it. With any luck, we’ll be able to report shortly on programming as well.

• Speaking of SDCC, being on the press list means I get all kinds of PR announcements about who is gonna be there. In case you were curious, the You Have Got To Be Kidding Me I Don’t Even Award (2012) has just been decided, on account of nothing is going to top this:
  

  E L JAMES AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING “FIFTY SHADES OF GREY” TRILOGY WILL SIGN COPIES OF HER BOOKS AT COMIC-CON SAN DIEGO 2012. [SHOUTING original]

  It goes on for another couple of paragraphs after that; no word yet on whether or not the TwiHards have adopted Ms James as one of their own, but in case they have, there are new rules on lining up for days in advance.

• On the topic of actual comics, note should be made of the fact that Tyler Page is releasing a pretty sizable chunk of work (namely, pretty much the entire ten year history of this Stylish Vittles work) out there as an e-book for free:
  

  Ten years ago I published a book called Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl. It was the beginning of my professional comics career (such that it is). Two more books followed.

  I have put together a 10th Anniversary Collection eBook which includes all three original books, as well as the conclusion that came years later: Stylish Vittles 4 – Behind the Page: The Saga of Rob Harvard. Additionally I put together a “Director’s Cut” eBook in which I eliminated all of the elements of the original books which seemed unnecessary to present a shorter, simpler narrative. Finally, included in the Deluxe Collection, are two Appendices: Appendix One is almost one thousand pages of process material – outlines, scripts, sketches, layouts, etc. Appendix Two contains all of the material I did which led up to the creation of the Stylish Vittles books.

  For reference, that’s more than 2000 pages of comics work that will cost you nothing but bandwidth (download here) and time. May I be so crass to mention (because Page is soft-pedaling this bit) that if you like what you read, you might want to toss him some money? I’m still refining a private rule of thumb for freely-distributed media that I enjoy:

  Mentally track how many pages you read, buy $1 of merch for every 10 pages.

  … on account of it falls neatly in line with buying a book collection covering a year’s worth of strips, but when creators like Page drop a few thousand pages on you, that’s the equivalent of ten or twelve books right there.

  So — sliding scale! Ten cents a page up to 250 pages, then another buck per 100 pages after that. Even if it’s not to my liking and I end up deleting it, I figure I ought to kick in a couple bucks to cover the network costs. Complicated? Maybe. But I’m trying to be an ethical consumer of media as well as a supporter of creators. Alternate models welcome in the comments.

• Speaking of potentially-bankrupting work collections, Ryan Estrada keeps hinting at “secret projects” and (in private communication) being “so very busy”. We all know what happens when Estrada gets busy in secret, right? Three dozen guest strips in one day. Until he decided to double that a year later¹.

  Until he decided he’s got bigger fish to fry, meaning that whatever is coming will most likely put the scope/scale of prior releases to shame, and thus can only be termed The Estradapocalypse. Readers are urged to stockpile canned goods, plastic sheeting, and duct tape in anticipation.

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¹ Including, it should be noted, a guest strip for this blog featuring Masthead Guy (who, contrary to an IFAQ, is not meant to be me).

It is so hot out today, rumor has it, Aaron Diaz has been seen wearing a suit with only two pieces. Two pieces.

Man, Johnny always made those jokes look so easy. Regardless, it is hot as balls today (so don’t trip on them), and I am going to point you at some things and then go back to thinking cool thoughts.

• I realize that AnthroCon isn’t on the regular circuit for a lot of webcomickers¹, but Ursula Vernon goes every year (for somewhat obvious reasons), and she did a nice post-mortem on her experiences in the dealer’s room. What struck me is her finding that prints are doing poorly for her, and I was wondering if other creators have found the same to be true. I’ve always had the impression that prints are a low-cost, high-profit item, and sincerely hope this isn’t a trend. Maybe fursuit gloves lack the manual dexterity to carry a print flat without crinkling it?
• Sighted at the venerable (and webcomics-supporting) Midtown Comics in New York City: an announcement of a signing at their downtown location in the evening of 5 July by Our Valued Customers creator “Mr Tim” Chamberlain. All the details are here, save for the bit on the flyer that notes it would be very nice of you to actually buy something from Chamberlain in exchange for his time².
• Mark your calendars: TCAF 2013 dates set for 11 and 12 May, at the TRL as usual. The exhibitor application process starts 1 August, so start getting your credentials together.
• Speaking of really well-run shows and information well in advance, the Programming/floor maps for SDCC not up yet³, but there’s one to put in your calendar in ink: how does a sneak peek at the comics documentary STRIPPED sound?
  

  STRIPPED will be giving a special panel presentation Friday night, July 13th, from 7-8PM, in the combined rooms “25ABC”. Directors Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellett, and Editor Ben Waters will be talking about the film: How the project got started, the highs and lows of the process, and our hopes for where it ends up.

  Make a note! And can anybody tell me how to get ink off my Android screen?

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¹ Although I’d love to see how R Stevens might fare there.

² I’m not saying that if you came to the signing and monopolized his time and didn’t buy anything that you would necessarily show up in the strip; I am saying that you’d probably deserve it, though.

³ Is it me, or is this cutting it a lot closer than normal? Preview Night launches in less than 20.25 days.

One of the most influential cartoonists of the last fifty years is hanging up his comic; while not a webcomic, Matt Groening’s Life In Hell (with its monstrous overbites, bulgy eyes, and sardonic observers dripping iconoclasm from every pore¹) provided an example in bizarro stream-of-consciousness via recognizable character that would find expression in a hundred later creations². For all that you taught us about junior high school, petty authority, and the airport snack bar, thank you Mr Groening. Now could you please tell us which one is Akbar, and which one is Jeff?

You know what it’s like today? Hot. The kind of oppressive, viscous, walking-is-an-effort kind of day where the only respite is the occasional good fortune of passing an open doorway, and catching the cold air rushing out before the storekeeper yells at a departing customer to close the damn door. It’s dangerously hot out, with official warnings about the risks , and school boards wondering how what an acceptable number of heatstroked kids might be before they decide that maybe losing the graduation robes would be a good idea. If the kids are the future, maybe a few more of them should live to see tomorrow instead of roasting inside nonbreathing nylon tents in solid colors.

And lucky us, it’s going to be worse tomorrow.

Hey, you know where it’s not quite so foul? Toronto. They even have a chance of a sweet thunderstorm to bring down the heat and humidity maybe. It’s also traditionally quite pleasant in TO in the early autumn, which is why I want to mention that during Toronto’s inaugural iteration of the venerable Just For Laughs festival come September, there will be 42 separate acts of the humorous variety³.

Act number 7 on 21 September, 7:00pm? Kate Beaton. Because webcomics needn’t be the entirety of her creative drive, because she’s still got the performing bug from her monthly series with Michael Kupperman, because she is funny as hell. If you’re in the (blessedly cool, possibly even cool enough to support the ice weasels, ) GTO in September, be sure to check her out.

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¹ Especially personified in the form of Akbar & Jeff, who are “brothers, or lovers, or possibly both”; their weltanschauung (look it up) was especially malleable, and disdainful of nearly every philosophy that’s ever flirted with saying “Feh”.

² Speaking of which, did I mention that there’s a new Achewood today?

³ Unlike Groening’s description of “What is funny about man get kicked in crotch?”, it is unlikely that any of these will feature that particular occurrence for big surefire laugh-chuckles.

Yeah, still working on my latest Kickstarter thing; there’s 38 separate projects I’m including in this one, so it’s taking a while. So let me point you at some brief items of interest.

• Firstly, I want to show two ways you can purchase the first collection¹ of A Girl And Her Fed (by K. Brooke “Otter” Spangler) in PDF form: 1, 2. One may note that both copies of Rise Up Swearing contain the full content of the print book, minus the bonus art on the get-Otter-to-sketch-this-page page, because hey, no pages. They are in all ways identical, except for the price.

  One of these versions is identified as To Own (for US$5.00), and one as To Give To A Friend (for US$2.50). Naturally, there’s no way for Otter to tell whether the copy is for you or for somebody else, you’re on the honor system here. I actually think this is a great way to get an established member of your audience to help spread the world-of-mouth to people that may like a comic, by making it easier for them to do so. It’s a PDF, so the production costs are already sunk from the print version; getting half the usual price is better than none, when pretty much by definition it’s going to somebody that never would have bought it in first place due to not knowing about it; in the case that new somebody likes it, they may well become a paying customer in the future. I’d be surprised if I didn’t see this model adopted by other creators.

• Attention, residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas: Andy Runton² is coming to see you next week. On Saturday, 16 June, Runton will be at the ToonSeum³ at 1:00pm for a demonstration and signing. No special charge for the event, but there is the regular admission fee to the ToonSeum which is only five bucks if you’re 13 or older and one single dollar for children 6 and over. That’s as good as free, and Andy captivates kids as well as anybody this side of Patrick McDonnell. Grab yer kid, grab yer Owly books, and go meet a humble, talented guy who will most definitely put a smile on your face.
• Attention, residents of Boulder, Colorado and surrounding areas: Chris Yates isn’t coming to see you, on account of he lives there. But he will be dropping by FACTORY|Made creative lab/design incubator to teach a workshop of wooden puzzle making. The fun starts on Sunday, 17 June from 12:00 noon to 6:00pm; tools and materials provided, just bring your imagination and a willingness to get all swoopy and curvy with a scroll-saw. I imagine room will be limited so that participants aren’t sitting around all afternoon waiting for their turn, so advanced registration is recommended; call FACTORY|Made at 303 927 0802 and please note the US$60 registration fee. If you’re uncertain as to whether or not Yates makes stuff that’s up your alley, check out his work here (where, I hear through the grapevine, he’s having a sale).

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¹ Disclaimer: I wrote the foreword for this book, but I don’t get anything out of pimping it here, other than a sense of satisfaction that a work I really like might find another reader or two.

² Who, yeah, technically doesn’t do a webcomic but Owly is great and it’s in the spirit of independent owners and it’s my blog so shut up.

³ Who, yeah, aren’t devoted to webcomics either, but they do a lot of good exhibits and events and they got the funk.

The things is, working on The Next Way Of Doing Things isn’t enough. As Dave Kellett clearly stated as the final thought of his talk, his analysis and recommendations are only good for 12 – 18 months tops; after that point, the complexities become too pronounced, the future path too hard to predict from here and now. In a lot of ways, for a lot of people, The Next Way Of Doing Things is arriving just in time to become irrelevant, since everybody already engaged in The Next Way is currently developing The Way After That.

This situation leads to Rashomonesque situations for observers, and where participants who just now are coming to realize that they’re a generation behind on business practice are unable to even perceive that they’re actually on the verge of being two generations behind¹. I have to imagine that such a realization would lead to — at the least — disorientation, and likely anger.

Before Jim Davis’s talk, word was already making the rounds about something that happened at the closed-door NCS member’s meeting that morning. Jon Rosenberg was busy being taught the secret handshake as a new member, business items were taken care of, and the floor opened to anybody that wanted to make comments.

Cue the ominous music.

The NCS has a hefty contingent of members that are extremely elderly²; some of these guys remember what it was like 50, 60 years ago, when there weren’t no dames, everybody looked alike, and the engineers that would someday invent the tools these digital whippersnappers would eventually use were still in diapers. Change is the last thing you want at that stage in your life, but most people are too polite to shit over somebody in public. One guy, though….

Okay, I want to go out of my way to be fair, here. I don’t know the gentleman in question, haven’t ever met him, and for all I know he loves his dog and his great-grandchildren and is motivated more by fear than by malice. In my head (for I was not there), I imagine that one slightly crazy great-uncle that every family seems to dread inviting to Thanksgiving, because while he might profess to be joking when he complains about all of the <insert minority here> you can’t shake the feeling that he’s “kidding on the square”. Good ol’ crazy Great-Uncle Slappy. Yeah. Pass the yams.

So Great-Uncle Slappy engaged in what others have described (accurately, I believe) as a “screed” against them young’uns, and how there need to be different tiers of membership because real cartoonists use paper, and anybody using digital means should have to pay more to belong³. Welcome to the NCS, Jon.

I might not have brought Great-Uncle Slappy up, except that for the rest of the weekend, I heard one thought repeatedly expressed: people were angry about the rant. Maybe he was kidding, maybe he wasn’t, but to act in such a manner towards fellow members was not acceptable. I heard people that wished they could have told G-US to sit down and shut up, but felt constrained by politeness and the fact that he apparently always gets the last speaking slot to complain. I heard one board member apologize to Jon personally, saying that he’d wished he’d been able to cut the mic. I wonder if Cathy Guisewite, Lynn Johnston, Hillary Price were wondering if the bile would turn in their direction.

So there’s the crux of the problem — a generation that remembers How Things Used To Be, a generation that sees How Things Must Change (which, to be clear, seems to incorporate the entire leadership of the NCS), and a teeny-tiny generation that have been working on their own and decided to find out what the NCS might have to offer. For actuarial reasons, it is imperative that the second generation increase the numbers of the third generation and rapidly, because without new blood, the organization will age itself out of existence. While we’re at it, the NCS probably needs to be a whole lot less male, a whole lot less white, or what appeal will it have to the extraordinary talents that surely have better things to do than be berated — he’s kidding! really! — by Great-Uncle Slappy?

And there’s the rub. To a person, every member I met and spoke with (especially the board members) recognizes this reality and the importance of making changes. I think that the new division award for On-Line Comic Strips (one last time, imperfect; one last time, potential to be what people want and need it to be) is just the first step. Making the organization institutionally friendly to younger creators isn’t just a good idea — it’s a survival strategy.

People like Mike Krahulik and Dave Kellett may have first picked up a pen because of Garfield or Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes, but what of the half-generation that came behind them and may not have had the habit of reading newspapers? Is being in the room with history — but not personal inspirations — enough to entice them 10 or 20 years from now?

But what if the current generation of creators⁴ were there to greet them? Do they have an incentive to join for the sheer love of the medium and wait out the generational shift? Heck, will they see value in going to another city for the weekend and not sell stuff?

If I seem to be more identifying questions than proposing answers, it’s because I don’t really have a say in the matter. I’m not eligible for membership, I don’t draw, I am very much the consumer instead of the creator. To the extent that I’m able to work a small part of the transformation⁵, I am happy to do so. But right now, the future of the organization depends on how much potential members value being part of a continuity to the history of comics. There’s a big dialogue to be had among the interested parties and I think it’s going to be fascinating.

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¹ Or perhaps merely haven’t processed it into higher realms of acceptance yet.

² I heard the number 91, being the count of members over the age of 80.

³ I imagine that Gregg Evans, who has produced Luann on a Cintiq for years, was thrilled at this notion.

⁴ Off the top of my head: Gran, Beaton, Brosgol, Telgemeier, Larson, Vernon, Moen, Meconis, Corsetto, Allegri, Sugar, Ward, Jones-Quartey, Dreistadt, Ota, Carroll, Miller and Mercer (yes, I’m still on about them, they’re terrific), and shall I go on?

The careful reader may notice something most of these creators have in common.

⁵ I’m actually torn about this — I have great affection for webcomics and some people think the depth and breadth of my knowledge are enough to make me useful in the ongoing process of coming up with an award everybody can be proud of. On the other hand, from a philosophical standpoint, I feel it would be better for the NCS if it had a wide enough swath of members with enough exposure to webcomics that my services weren’t needed. That’s probably pretty synonymous with “there’s a lot of younger members what joined up”.

The title of the session was Making A Living As A Cartoonist In The 21st Century, presented by Michael Jantze, Dave Kellett, and John Lotshaw. Although I met Jantze for the first time over the weekend, we had served together on the nominating committee for the NCS’s first division award for webcomickry; Kellett has been mentioned many times on this page and (disclaimer!) is a personal friend; Lotshaw I didn’t know or meet until after the talk was done. As I had some idea where the session was going thematically, I spent a lot of time watching the audience rather than the podium.

Jantze was up first, with a detailed, fairly lengthy presentation on the history of cartooning, which initially struck me as incongruous for a session detailing current and future business models. However, watching the audience (largely creators in long-term relationships with syndicates or publishers), it began to make more sense — by tying the current state of cartooning with the changes it has gone through¹, Jantze primed the audience to accept a need for change.

Kellett talked about the value of disintermediation, of maintaining a direct connection to the audience, of the 1000 True Fans premise. Heads nodded sporadically, but the real turn-around moment was when Kellett effectively demonstrated that every syndicated cartoonist is already in the Give It Away For Free game. Citing numbers from Jeff Zugale regarding the total size of one day’s edition of Los Angeles Times in square inches vs cost (US$0.75), the amount paid by a reader for an average comic strip is literally measured in hundredths of a cent. Assuming that the ultimate customer of a comic strip is the reader², that’s about as close to the “Webcomics Model” as you can get.

The audience was still adjusting to that fact when Kellett hit them with some numbers: Here’s how I make my money, in percentages and broke it down by books, merch, advertising, and such. To demonstrate his point that there isn’t A Way To Do Things, he contrasted the very percentages supplied by Jeph Jacques, Danielle Corsetto, Howard Tayler, and other prominent webcomickers. This was when the flurry of note-taking began in earnest, with numbers and names being scribbled on any available blank surface³.

Having been primed to recognize Where They Are and How Things Can Work, Lotshaw hit the audience with Things You Can Do: differences between sites and apps; how to obtain ISBNs of your own; differences between Print on Demand, local print shops, and offset; how many copies of a book makes for economy of scale with each of those sources; good ways and crappy ways to produce PDFs for print; the fact that no middlemen taking a cut⁴ means you have to do all the things they would do. Scribble, scribble, scribble, Qs followed by As⁵, very enthusiastic applause.

More importantly, for the remainder of the weekend I watched Kellett get cornered by creators (fairly reconizable names, too), following up with more enquiries. How can I put things online? My archives are locked at [syndicate site]. Would I have to start over with a new project that I own? I don’t really see traffic at my website, much less sales. How long to build up that audience rapport?

I’ll acknowledge some confusion about the reluctance to start new comics that I heard expressed more than once — I’m in daily communication with creators that have two, three, or more things going on all the time. Then I realized that there’s a crucial time-sink in working for somebody other than yourself, one that takes up time that webcomickers don’t have to spend time on: webcomickers only have to put up work they’re happy with. Working for somebody else means lead times, approvals, rewrites, rewrites, rewrites. I wouldn’t be surprised if for many syndicated creators, those efforts take up time equivalent to developing merch, doing shipping, or traveling the con circuit.

I also suspect that a lot of minds shifted from the position of That Webcomics Model is stupid and can’t possibly work and over to Jeeze, I wonder if I have the time to shift to that Webcomics Model before I get to the point I want to retire. Will I bleed newspapers to the point of non-viability before I can make a shift? Can I ride it out? I’ll stress that nobody expressed words to that effect to me … but as far as gut feelings go, it’s a fairly strong one.

If there were stragglers still resistant to the notion of the need for change, they were pretty much obliterated when Jim Davis endorsed everything from the Jantze/Kellett/Lotshaw presentation towards the tail end of his own talk the next day. Garfield gets delivered to 5 000 000 Facebook accounts; small apps and comics are distributed with the hope that they’ll be passed around; he wished he’d known the things that J/K/L talked about three years earlier, as it would have saved him a lot of mistakes; giving away the comic for free and getting rid of the middlemen is the way to go. I get the feeling that if tomorrow, every newspaper on the planet ceased to carry comics⁶, Jim Davis wouldn’t see a measurable dip in income, and none of the five dozen people that work directly for him would lose their jobs. Again … gut.

So where to next?

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¹ And particularly to the fact that the current day has a lot of similarities with the 1890s.

² It’s actually the editor of the newspaper, for whom the cost of a strip is measurable by whole coins or bills.

³ In a number of cases it was the session handouts from Infomercial Guy, who had supplied note-taking space thereon. Each page in that handout was branded with his name and web address so I guess that counts as free publicity. Well played, Infomercial Guy.

⁴ Or, as Kellett put it, living on large margins instead of large volumes.

⁵ Big response of the Q&A: when the datum that when Bill Amend released his recent Fox Trot app for iOS devices, he made 25% of his usual two-year book sales in two weeks. Cue audible gasps and Ooooohs. The only ones in the audience that didn’t seem to be surprised at that point were the duo of Mercer & Miller, who were sitting directly in front of me.

⁶ Fun fact: 60% of Garfield’s audience is international, and a lot of dialogue/situations are designed to make the effort of translation simpler.

Jon, remember one thing, I said. The Reuben Awards dinner was done, the last bits of dessert being passed around the table, the ceremony getting ready to begin. If you win, you give me the manly hug and you kiss Amy, not the other way around. Jon Rosenberg’s wife has heard me, and behind Jon’s back she begins to choke on the bit of chocolate she’d been nibbling at.

Oh, I don’t know, says Jon, stroking his chin and staring at me. You’ve got the moustache, I’ve got the goatee, I wonder what that feels like on bare skin. Behind him, Amy begins choking all over again and I’m pretty sure something dessertish is about to come out her nose. Jon’s nervous, convinced he’s going to lose, happy to see that the On-Line Comic Strips division award is the first on the list, so that at least it’ll be over soon. He steps outside for his 87th smoke break and I apologize to Amy for timing my remarks while she was trying to eat. She’s shaking her head, prouder of Jon than I’ve ever seen, so happy that she could be here to share this with him.

Mike Krahulik is one table away with his wife, Kara, along with Robert Khoo and onetime PAX-wrangler Amber Fechko. She’s getting close to finishing medical school and her PhD, hoping to stay in Seattle for her neurosurgery residency. In about ten or twelve years, if you need somebody to cut into your brain to fix something that’s gone horribly wrong, hers is the face that you will want to see before the surgical mask goes on. In fifteen or twenty years, hers might be the first face you see, period, as she perfects her research into neuro implants to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and spider-sense to the wannabe angsty superheroes.

The last time I saw Kara she was pregnant with a boy who is now nearly two years old. She’s done the dress-up thing with Mike many times for Child’s Play, for the TIME 100, but it’s clear that each time she’s thrilled for him. The geeky guy with scribbly cartoons she’d met all those years ago is a key part of a small media empire, endlessly creative, able to spend loads of time with their sons, and dang does he clean up well.

Robert is Robert.¹

Mike hasn’t noticed yet that his award nomination is up first; he’d been hoping to hear an acceptance or two, have some idea what to say if he should find himself at the front of the room. It’s quickly decided: thank the NCS, say something on behalf of Jerry², thank Robert, extra-thank Kara. He’s pretty damn happy to be in the room, and later he’ll tell me Stephen Silver said I’m an inspiration to a generation and Jim Davis knew who I was and said he liked my work. That’s a pretty good night. Mike and Jon wish each other good luck.

I’ve lost track of Matthew Inman since the end of the pre-dinner cocktail reception³; he’d only arrived in Las Vegas a few hours earlier, and his first introduction to the NCS is a room full of people he doesn’t know. We shake hands and I’m glad that he’s so young, since it means that I’m no longer one of the ten youngest people in the room. Okay, there are kids of members here, and a delightful pair of students from SCAD⁴ that I’d met on Friday, but I’m definitely on the young end of the age spectrum. We talk about SQL coding for a bit with his girlfriend, Kyoko.

Matthew asks if I know anybody, and I nod towards where Jon, Mike, et. al. are having a drink with Bill Amend. I mention some of the people I’ve met during the weekend, but it’s a dozen or so out of the couple hundred in the room and we share that sense of disorientation that comes from standing on the periphery. Matthew surveys the room, taking in the membership and says to me, This is only my opinion, but I’m wondering why Zach Weiner isn’t here. They need to invite him! I mean, I do like one comic a week, and he’s putting great stuff up every day! We spend the rest of our talk discussing how awesome Zach and his creative collaborators⁵ are.

The time is getting close — there were various program bits, honors, and an intermission before the division awards, and people are coming back to the ballroom with fresh drinks. Amy tells me that Jon’s parents, who are watching their three kids back in New York, have forwarded a question from their daughter: Did Daddy get his reward yet?

The lights go down, and Dave Kellett and I wonder who will present this first recognition of webcomics. Bill Amend (a Cartoonist of the Year laureate) is announced and he’s brimming with energy as he leans towards the microphone to read the names of The nominees for On-Line Comic Strips, and it’s about fucking time. Sample strips are projected onto huge screens in the ballroom as each name is read to applause.

Amy gets her kiss. I get my manly embrace. While Jon is waylaid by photos and well-wishes on his way back from the stage I hug Amy and feel stray tears on her cheek. Jon makes it back to the table, not quite convinced any of this is actually happening. He ducks out once more, this time to call his parents. In the back of my mind, I imagine that somewhere in the extended clan, there’s an elderly relative or two that will finally stop wondering when that boy will get a real job.

If I have the timing correct, as I write this Jon and Amy are a thousand kilometers behind me and 10 kilometers straight down, waiting to fly home to their kids. They have with them a carryon bag with a heavy, impressive plaque next to two neatly folded notecards. One has four names on it, and the smaller one simply says

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¹ It might be appropriate to abbreviate that further: Robert is.

² Sadly, Mike’s Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry Holkins and his wife Brenna were unable to attend and were missed.

³ Catching up later, he told me he was seated at the Table of Late Registrants, halfway across the room from Webcomics Corner.

⁴ Specifically, Sarah Miller, who is finishing her junior year, and Ashley Mercer, who is preparing to graduate and start an internship as a Disney Imagineer. When I met them on Friday Ms Miller neglected to mention that she was this year’s Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship winner. She has a style that tends toward Cthonic horror, and Ms Mercer has an interest in children’s books. I suggested they collaborate, and when I ran into them in the ballroom, they told me that they had been excitedly kicking ideas back and forth the night before. Watch these two names — they’re going to be huge.

⁵ With the exception of James Ashby, who has been previously established as history’s greatest villain.

One of the rules I adhere to in life is, when Robert Khoo scribbles a note that says Hey Gary, we’re going to go gamble, want to come?, the only appropriate answer is Yes. Particularly when the note comes during a session that is….

Okay, I want to be extra-fair here, because everybody at the NCS I’ve met has been been terrific. Tom Richmond, the president, has put on a great show, and Jerry Van Amerongen¹ has put together a great slate of presenters and presentations. That being said, when soliciting presentations and/or presenters, it’s possible to have content described in a way that makes it sound better than it actually will be; usually it’s a matter of content and tone clashing with the audience.

Had it been a matter of me being the wrong audience because I’m not a cartoonist, I would have stayed out of respect for the speaker, but when it’s a case of somebody so very off the rails that you hope everybody else in the room is as uncomfortable as you are, because it means they aren’t being suckered in²? When Robert nodded in the direction of the door, getting away from the room just made sense.

Which was great, because after finding a table with open chairs together, and Robert declared open interview time. I double-checked with them some of the details on the new Paint The Line game (availability at San Diego: check), and admired the new First Party polo that Mike Krahulik was wearing (it’s moved onto the “definite purchase” list for San Diego, and may I say again that the First Party upgrade program was a customer-care stroke of genius?). Then we got down to the really good stuff: Lookouts.

You may have noted the news last year that Lookouts is being made into a tabletop RPG/board game. You may have seen art teasers from Mike earlier in the week. What you probably didn’t know is that Cryptozoic Entertainment, developers of the game, will also be publishing an ongoing Lookouts comic book, the first two issues of which are already completed. Mike’s very happy with the work done on the interiors, and the cover image he showed me (the teaser is just a small portion of it) looks gorgeous.

The plan is for electronic distribution, but I really hope that a print edition can be made at some point — although Penny Arcade and its projects have always been designed for adults, they’ve had plenty of creations that reach down the age spectrum: Cardboard Tube Samurai³ could easily overlap with the younger readers of, oh I don’t know, Usagi Yojimbo. Lookouts and The New Kid can be enjoyed by an even younger audience — if you’re comfortable with your kid reading BONE, these two stories are no problem (which pulls us down to seven or eight years old). Kids don’t have enough comics that they can call their own, and Lookouts would slot in nicely next to Adventure Time in the local comic stores. Just sayin’.

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¹ Who did a cartoon back when I was in high school that has stuck with me — it involved a doberman throwing himself out a second-story window after realizing the family had named him “Binky”. I told him how funny that strip was to me and I think it pleased him that somebody remembered it for goin’ on 30 years.

² I’m being oblique here in details because the topic of the talk was getting free publicity for yourself, and the tone was just so … infomercial that I decided I didn’t want to reward the speaker with the name-check he repeatedly made clear he desperately craves. Also, upon leaving the room, I made sure that I had not accidentally signed up for a time-share in a condo. Seriously, bragging about getting on the local news by exploiting a tenuous connection to Elizabeth Taylor on the day of her death in order to promote your animation business? That is not something that non-horrible people do.

³ And my goodness, has it really been three years since a CTS adventure?