I have a feeling that I’m getting in trouble for today’s opinion-mongering.

• So there was a piece written today regarding a fairly famous slinger of words, how those words fit into a webcomic, and the insight one may gain into the workings of that writer’s mind. There was also an interview with Chris Onstad about the Achewood hiatus. As informative as I found the Onstad interview by Laura Hudson¹, it seemed familiar — Onstad wants to work in prose, the short panel comic format doesn’t interest him as it once did, burnout is a terrible thing, merchandise fulfillment brings him no joy.

  By contrast, I found Jerry Holkins conveyed his feelings on having his brain chemistry [un]regulated in a way that I hadn’t seen before; this may be more due to my aggressively searching out news of Onstad when he went on hiatus last year, and not having seen Holkins talk on this topic so much previously (although I do recall a particularly incisive episode of PATV on the topic).

  None of which should be construed as criticism of Onstad, who is not my bitch; I simply cannot conceive of a life where my email resembles Onstad’s:

  Actually, I just recently got my first hate mail since I got back to work. I was like, what took you so long? …
  I don’t know, I almost don’t want to bother dissecting why people do this. This guy writes me and is like, “I don’t see why you bothered coming back. You’re just trying to be as cool as you used to be, and it’s not working. Why do you hate your readers?”

  In general, the back third of the interview was the most interesting, as Hudson and Onstad got specifically into the economics of webcomics, and that’s a good read.

• Hey, Sparky, where will you be on Friday evening? If your answer isn’t On an airplane from Rhode Island to New Jersey², it should be At the Johnny Wander 2 book release party in Brooklyn. Bergen Street Comics has a justly-deserved reputation as one of the best stores in the Northeast, and given the sheer density of webcomickin’ talent in and around Brooklyn, I’d say there’s an excellent chance of meeting some quality creators above and beyond the evening’s headliners. Fun starts at 8:00pm, and includes a live delivery of advice from John. I’d like to tell you that John is much less scary in person than he appears to be in the comic, but I’m afraid it’s only marginally true.

_______________
¹ Who may have been induced to drink Chartreuse, which if you have not had it is sort of the monastic version of Jägermeister, or possibly Malört, in that there’s a million herbals and botanicals in there. Unlike the others, however, Chartreuse can be made to play nice with others in a cocktail. My theory is that mixability is negatively correlated with umlauts.

² As mine is, dammit.

Those with no problems with evolution but who hold out a cheery view of publishing, you might want to avoid the third bullet.

• A pair of webcomickers whose work I enjoy, whose drafting skills are exquisite, and who coincidentally happen to be housemates, are about to embark on a project that promises the awesomest creatures this side of old Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strips. Evan Dahm (sample critter: here) and Yuko Ota (sample critter: here) will be … let’s let Dahm explain the ground rules:
  

  Beginning with this creature drawn by me, we will take turns drawing future creatures, each one representing a visible step in a theoretical evolutionary process. We’ll play with the aesthetic of living things and the process of natural selection, and may or may not end up with a biologically plausible series of beasts.

  Future evolutionary leaps of The Exquisite Beast will take place on Fridays (Ota) and Tuesdays (Dahm), so be sure to check back tomorrow for what ol’ squidface’s genetic descendant looks like — and no cheating by comparing notes around the breakfast nook, Yuko and Evan! I’ve got my eye on you.

• Just to throw out a number: US$3,512,345. That would be the total monies raised by Child’s Play in 2011, having obliterated what I thought was a stretch of a goal by more than half a million friggin’ dollars. For reference, this kicks the lifetime total for Child’s Play to a (frankly, staggering) US$12,510,909; I’m pretty sure that there are sovereign nations with budgets for child health services that don’t reach that number.
• Found via the twitterfeed of Dylan Meconis, a link to an interview with Ellen Archer, CEO of Hyperion Books¹, wherein she discusses changes in the publishing world (some coming, some already here). The bit that caught my eye starts about three questions from the end, where Archer (who has already floated the idea of the end of advances as we presently know them) is asked by Jeremy Greenfield for an example of changes to the business side of things:
  

  EA: I’ve been looking closely at pre-orders and pre-order strategy and how that aligns with authors that we acquire and publish that have active blog sites and followers.

  We’ve got a number of authors who are really good with social media and when we acquire their books, three months ahead of time, they’ll do something really interesting for their audience, like a cover-reveal, and all of the sudden, you’ll see the pre-orders build. Then you take that information to retailers and that can impact their interest in ordering more copies.

  On the publication date, all of those orders release, and then it gets really quiet and euphoria dissipates because you get these mediocre daily sales for three or four weeks.

  Then sales start growing and building. The core fans buy the book, and then they start talking about it and sharing it with all their friends, and then you begin to see the results of it all paying off.[emphasis added]

  From discussions I’ve had with more than one creator who went from self-publishing to working with a traditional publisher, that expectation that The author will help promote the book has pretty much crossed the line into The author will provide a ready-made audience and do all the promotions and we can just cash the checks. Following up on that answer, Greenfield continued:

  JG: That’s interesting, but what if your author isn’t skilled in that approach?

  EA: That’s going to be a problem. That’s always been a problem.

  If they’re not promotable, then it makes selling their book challenging.

  If the work is extraordinary, it will be discovered, but it will be challenging. You have a much more cluttered marketplace than we did beforehand.

  Also, I will look to acquire media-genic authors and properties. [emphasis added]

  Catch that? There’s a couple different ways to interpret that last sentence. The more generous (based on a reading of an earlier part of the interview) interpretation is You have to have a property that will translate to other media and tie into other product types. Think of the book that can be referenced in the TV show (Disney owns networks, after all), which then shows up as a plush (they own retail stores) and decorate a peripherally-related amusement park ride (Disney owns … aw, you know).

  The less generous interpretation of that last sentence (one which a lifetime of observing media companies, along with a low and suspicious nature, tells me that I cannot ignore) is And you, the author, have to be pretty and have a compelling story of your own; survive horrific circumstances or get a disease that doesn’t show in the face and then we can talk Lifetime Original Movie. Think I’m too cynical? Let’s give it a couple of years and see how many more highly-hyped fake memoirs² make it to the shelves.

_______________
¹ AKA the publishing arm of The Mouse.

² I once saw David Sedaris read a short piece of mostly fiction that featured his lament that The fucked-up alcoholic whose memoir is keeping me from the shelves turned out to have made up the whole thing. Can you believe it? Goddamn fucked-up alcoholic.

Later that night, I fixed the printer driver on his Macbook and he paid me twenty dollars.

Before we get started, I have a pair of time-sensitive reminders. Firstly, Sarra Scherb is still collecting your input as to which webcomics should be included in the digital portion of an exhibition at UW come March, at least for the next two days. You can nominate up to three — I threw my love to the Three Ks of Webcomics: Kate, Karl, and Kmeredith.

Secondly, SPX 2012 registration is now open. The show traditionally fills its vendor space quickly, so don’t delay.

• As mentioned previously, I received in the mail a preview of MoD2¹, which contained the first story from MoD², plus two from the upcoming collection, due this summer. They’re a nice contrast, too — I’m not including the titles because at least one of them will give away a central premise — with one asking the lighthearted question How would the Machine of Death change the field of organized villainy? and the other asking the depressingly serious question If they threw an Apocalypse and nobody came, would anybody notice?

  These two stories were really good, you guys. I mean, imagine you’re a James Bond type supervillain, and the governments of the world stopped sending agents whose deaths were LASER or TANK FULL OF SHARKS or BULLETS; instead they only send agents that will die of THYROID CANCER or ALZHEIMER’S, so now what do you do with your elaborate deathtraps? You get creative, that’s what.

  As MoD editor David Malki ! had a not-insignificant career creating trailers for major motion pictures, and as I know that he hated it when the client’s marketing requirements had him give away all the good material in the trailer, leaving the rest of the movie a disappointment, I have confidence that these two stories are not the only good ones from the book and that the full volume will contain many stories as good or better.

• Hey, funny thing, you know where Colleen AF Venable works? :01 Books. And you know what :01 Books sent me just before Christmas? Review copy of Friends With Boys, collecting the still-running webcomic by Faith Erin Hicks. Put those facts together and you know what it means? I know what the next 50-odd pages of FWB are, and arrrgh I can’t tell you because it’s really well done and I don’t want to spoil you.

  So here’s what I can tell anybody who’s been reading FWB in its free webcomic incarnation³: Hicks has a sure eye for the perils of navigating the waters of adolescence, a sure hand at giving her characters distinctive yet recognizable designs⁴, and an ear for natural dialogue⁵ . Ignore the occasional Canadianisms (most noticeable: Grade 9) and the story could take place in any small town on the eastern coast of North America from Connecticut to New Brunswick. Ignore the ghost that’s silently stalking POV character Maggie and it could be the story of anybody making their way to a new high school for the first time. Some day, the setbacks and victories in these characters lives might look small, but right now they’re the sort of things that stay with you for life.

  Oh, and there’s a drama club musical with zombies, which instantly makes it better than any musical ever put on by my high school.

  I’ve come to accept that :01 can be trusted implicitly to publish works that are worth your time and money. Unless you have an unreasoning hatred of a book list that tilts towards YA material (or, as I prefer to think of it, material that appropriate for the YA audience but crosses over to the A audience just fine, thank you very much), there’s no reason not to follow just about everything that they produce. They’ve become the Pixar of graphic novels, where the vetting has been done and the assurance of quality can be assumed; I’ll even go so far as to say that :01 might actually score higher than Pixar on my “implicit trust” scale, since I don’t believe :01 would ever have released Cars 2.

_______________
¹ Electric Somethingaloo.

² “FLAMING MARSHMALLOW”, read by Colleen AF Venable here.

³ Anybody who hasn’t been reading FWB in its webcomic incarnation, I would encourage you to start because it’s really good.

⁴ For example, Zander and Lloyd look like a pair of teens desperately trying to find hair and clothing choices that will distinguish them, given that they’re not entirely thrilled with being (presumably identical) twins at the moment. Likewise, there’s a family resemblance between Zander and Lloyd, older brother Daniel, younger sister Maggie, and their father.

⁵ Even better, an ear for when dialogue is unnecessary; there’s a lot of quiet time in Friends With Boys

Warning to readers with younger children: this post features hot, hot footnote action⁰.

• The discussion in comment threads (plural) regarding the offer of Scott Kurtz¹ to consult with syndicates, syndicated cartoonists, or anybody that wants his² wisdom in applying an online bid’ness strategy remains mostly productive. Some of the discussion has spilled over to Webcomics Dot Com today (subscription required), the substantial gist of which can be read here at Fleen. For me, it’s just a pleasure to see Kurtz Guigar insist that their actions are not “dick-waving”. I think you might be overlooking another consulting opportunity for the ladies, Brad.

  In any event, the tone of the conversation seems to have settled again on what the “proper way of doing things” might be, vis-a-vis consulting. To which one might point out that while Kurtz³ makes no bones about being an actual consultant-type guy, he⁴ does have an office down the hall from an actual consultant-type guy. One that we can probably all agree is a supervillain-level genius with a track record and a sharp suit and every-damn-thing.

  The other issue I see being raised is whether or not small-scale solutions can scale upwards. The only real experiment we have of an individual attempting to do so continues to scale way the heck up. True, Mr CK is a comic, not a maker of comics, but I’d suggest that he has more in common with comickers than different. The model of the individual creative producer applies equally well in both cases. Now, may I suggest that we see what Kurtz⁵ can actually deliver before deciding it’s fruitless endeavour? I promise you, there will be ample opportunity for you to take him⁶ to task if it doesn’t work. Let’s let him⁷ actually fail before declaring the effort a failure.⁸

• In other news:
  

  Child’s Play has reached our 2011 fundraising goal!!! $2.2mil and counting thanks to you, the community.

  Excellent work but don’t slack off, people. A year may come when Child’s Play will hit some kind of structural limit and not exceed the prior year’s fundraising, but it is not this year. Some US$95,000 will see to that, and I maintain that US$2.5 million is an attractively round number. Go. Give.

_______________
⁰ Also the words “Brad Guigar” in close proximity to the words “dick-waving”; you have been warned.

¹ And Guigar. Brad, you should just get Scott to change his name to have the footnote, it’d save me a lot of trouble.

² And Guigar’s.

³ And Guigar.

⁴ And, for once, not Guigar.

⁵ And Guigar.

⁶ And Guigar.

⁷ And Guigar.

⁸ This is not to say that I assume the effort will be a failure, only that pre-emptive declarations that failure is inevitable therefore the effort is pointless don’t actually accomplish anything.

I think it says something (not sure what exactly, but something for sure) that I did a Google search on cavortment to make sure I got the Zappa quote right, and the first hit was a four and a half year old post from this very blog. Another man might take this as a sign that he needed to not throw so many semi-oblique references to Thing-Fish into his writing, but I am not that man. Onwards to the void.

• Uplift: One may have noticed a comic that Tony Piro did about a year ago that homages a familiar scene to make a point about religion and such. This particular cartoon has been appropriated numerous times by people that don’t understand the difference between Draw something that references Sparky while making my own point and Just erase Piro’s name and pretend I did it. Piro himself has come to accept that there’s no point in trying to police jerks:
  

  It’s probably one of the best received things I’ve ever drawn. But its success has also resulted in many people altering it for their own purposes, erasing my URL and replacing it with their own, and ruining what I think was originally a positive statement.

  I could attempt to police these copies, but ultimately this is impossible to do on the internet, especially once images start spreading on social sites like Facebook.

  But there is an upside:

  Even if I cannot eliminate these other copies, together we can drown them out by spreading a superior message.

  Please help me by sharing this comic anyway you can. Post it to your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook page, or even email it to friends and family. In keeping with the spirit of the season, for every 500 page views the comic gets between now and the end of the year, I will donate $1 to Doctors Without Borders. Thank you for your continued support!

  Spreading an original to drown out inferior shadows, and supporting a worthy charity at the same time? It’s a deal.

• Frolic: Today is the second (pre-zumnably¹ annual) Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, so get out there and make some friends, dammit. One place you might be sure to make those friends is at the Dinosaur Comics Combo-Platter Book Launch/Holiday Party at Pauper’s Pub in Toronto. Word has it that Ryan North² has a brother who is a professional brewer and he will be bringing special beers so you really want to be there.
• Cavortment: We at Fleen have run many a story tying to San Fransisco’s Cartoon Art Museum and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum, but never have we had cause to bring both into a single story until now. In approximately six hours, Pittsburgh and San Fransisco will meet in some kind of Monday Night Sportball contest³, and the respective honchos of CAM and TS (Andrew Farago and Joe Wos); have tied their sacred honor to whichever team manages to do the most points:
  

  As the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers face off on the football field, the cities’ cartoon museums are getting in on the gridiron action too. The San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum’s Curator Andrew Farago and Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum Director Joe Wos have issued a friendly wager based on the outcome of the December 19th Monday night game. The losing team’s fan will visit the other city’s museum and conduct a cartooning workshop while wearing the opposing team’s jersey. Will Joe Wos don Joe Montana’s colors? Will Farago suit up like Franco?

  Andrew Farago, author of the The Looney Tunes Treasury and curator of the San Francisco-based Cartoon Art Museum has outlined specific directions that he will only wear a classic 1970s Steelers jersey in the event of a 49ers loss. Joe Wos, director of the ToonSeum, has not outlined any specific jersey requirements as up until the bet he hadn’t realized San Francisco even had a football team.

  Okay! Smack talk between cartoon nerds! I think we can all agree, whoever wins in this contest⁴, I think we can all agree that the loser is just begging for a wedgie.

Editor’s note: I was going to have something here about Howard “Evil Twin” Tayler’s amazing Kickstarter campaign for the Schlock Mercenary boardgame — #2 slot for boardgames in Kickstarter history, over US$82,000 raised on a goal of US$25,000, having to come up with new over-goal rewards, etc., but unfortunately I just couldn’t make it fit in the three-part theme for today’s post. So I didn’t bring it up. Sorry, Howard.

_______________
¹ Prologue, Zappa, Willis⁵, et. al.

² He’s dreamy.

³ Possibly foobaw.

⁴ Which may involve a place called The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field, which sounds like there should be some Nazgûl guarding it.

⁵ Ike, not David.

There’s certain things that make you feel good, like being solicited for your opinion on the year in comics by Heidi Mac or having The Spurge say something nice about something you wrote. No resting on laurels, though — got to keep moving forward.

• If I were interested in saving significant figures for some other purpose, I’d point out that 1.95 is practically 2.0, and therefore 1.95 million is almost exactly the same as 2.0 million. Which, if expressed in US dollars, is the amount raised by Child’s Play 2011 to date, making the US$2 million threshold pretty much a mathematical certainty. Heck, a full US$351,000 was raised on Monday night alone via the annual charity dinner/auction; there’s still some distance to go to continue the Child’s Play tradition of raising more every year, and since 2010 brought in US$2.29 million, I’m thinking that US$2.5 million makes for a nice, round number to shoot for. There’s still two weeks to go, so get to it.
• Lot of talk about comics going day-and-date with electronic publishing, but from what I gather the big publishers aren’t doing much to get their enormous back catalogs (especially out-of-print material) into the Kindles and Nooks of the world, or at least not at a realistic price point. Enter Howard Tayler, who’s put the first four Schlock Mercenary books into e-form. Further, it seems he’s wrangled a deal where he doesn’t have to host the transfers, as they’re being sold through the Baen e-books storefront (cf: our discussion yesterday about deciding what it’s better to get somebody else to do, without giving up ownership).

  I’m sure you’ve seen the same analyses of digital pricing I have, how publishers are leaving money on the table by not providing a compelling economic reason to go digital, and it seems that Tayler read them too. The first two SM volumes cost US$25 each in print, and vols 3 & 4 US$15 each or US$20 for the pair. E-version costs:

  • Volume 1: US$16
  • Volume 2: US$16
  • Volume 3: US$9
  • Volume 4: US$9
  • Four book bundle: US$45

  That’s a discount of 36% to 40% for single books or the four book bundle (the already-discounted two-book deal “only” gets a 10% further discount in digital). That’s how you do it.

• You guys remember when I teased you that there was something potentially very cool on the horizon that I’d been invited to participate in? Look, just pretend you remember, it was only two weeks ago. In any event, said PVCT is now definitely happening (barring unfortunate world-ending disasters or me walking in front of a bus). That’ll have to do on details until the middle of February or so.

For several reasons, actually. At the moment, the most significant reason is that I’m presently dealing with the first cold of winter and I’m far less likely to have these vicious headache/sore throat combos in April than December. Rest assured, however, that there are other reasons.

• Such as, sometime in the Spring is when we can most likely expect to see Stripped. Although half of Freddave Kellett-Schoeder was beat down by days of continuous travel and interviewing, the other half joined me for dinner last night, leading to an extensive conversation about the film, its direction, and the logistics of getting a rental car full of moviemaking equipment from Central New Jersey to the least accessible corner of Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan, and on toward Connecticut during prime commute hours. Vaya con Dios, plucky documentary makers.

  On this swing (the last of the filming schedule, although they may squeeze in a couple final interviews back home in LA), Freddave Kellett-Schroeder have managed to rack up another half-dozen interviews, talking with vets of the webcomics scene, the print scene, and super-vets of the glory days of newspaper comics; there were also tidbits and details regarding the film that can’t be revealed just yet, but once they are, will cause at least one of your heads to explode.

  If you don’t want it to be your head that explodes, start acclimating yourself to small doses of incredibly cool, unexpected news now (huh, the A Girl And Her Fed books are shipping¹) to progressively larger doses (huh, the NY International Children’s Film Festival is showing all 15 Ghibli films); by the time Stripped comes out, you’ll be ready to deal with the news I have in mind.

  But because you’ve been so good and patient, I am prepared to exclusively share one piece of exclusive information that I confirmed exclusively with Dave Kellett last night: his daughter is freakin’ adorable. What do you mean, Everybody that’s ever met her knows that? It’s an exclusive!

  In all seriousness, Stripped is impressing ever more, as I learn all that Schroeder and Kellett accomplished so far, and learn about the plans they have for it. There will be days worth of visuals and interviews that serious students of cartooning will want to pour through for decades to come. I can’t help but think that it’s going to form a definitive record of the state of cartooning at this point in time and in 20 or 30 years, some future historians or documentarians will be asking to use clips in future projects².

• Also coming around in the Spring, the comic convention circuit will be kicking into full swing. I got an email pointing out that space for C2E2 ’12 is now available, but what most caught my eye about an otherwise-routine announcement was a section on changed union work rules, which should make exhibiting far more practicable. From the email:
  

  Recent rulings and legislation have improved work rules throughout McCormick Place. Exhibitors can bring in outside food, use power tools to build their own booths with full time staff and benefit from decreased crew sizes. Click the button below for additional information directly from McCormick Place.

  The referenced button leads you to this PDF from the exhibition space, which details reduced work crew sizes, reduced double-time rates, and the ability to use personal vehicles at loading docks. Hopefully Reed Exhibitions and other showrunners will be able to promote similar changes at other convention sites; with comics increasingly the province of independent creators, having realistic overhead costs will be critical to keeping comics shows from becoming the exclusive province of movie and videogame companies.

_______________
¹ I love AGAHF and creator “Otter” Spangler, but would it kill her to have permalinks to individual newsposts on her site? No permalink to the books-are-in story, so here’s a picture for proof.

² I have a suspicion that Kellett and Schroeder might be a bit more willing to share clips of their work for future projects than they have found present licensors to be.

Funny, I thought Boxing Day wasn’t for another three and a half weeks.

• For starters, the mad publishing project that is Box Brown’s Retrofit Comics has a group signing/release party at Jim Hanley’s Universe in Midtown Manhattan on Friday¹, from 6:00-8:00pm.
• Across the river, the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has its one-day run on Saturday² in (surprise) Brooklyn, from noonish to nineish, depending on location. You’ll find various members of the Pizza Island there, along with Retrofit (again), ACT-I-VATE, and more debuts than you can shake a stick at.
• Also on Saturday² and running through Sunday³, Gallery Nucleus in The Greater LA Metroplex launches its latest Brandon Bird-inspired/curated show (with co-curator Julia Vickerman), The JP Show. It’s inspired by all of the humans from the Jurassic Park movies, and seems to lean pretty heavy on the Goldblum (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The exhibit reception starts at 6:00pm (West Coast hours), so if you can travel infinitely quickly, you can attend both BCGF and TJPS; contributors include Carly Monardo, Chris Hastings, and — dang, again? — Box Brown.
• In case that bicoastal flurry of Boxness hasn’t completely drained your cash and energy, the following weekend⁴ marks the latest Webcomics Rampage in the Jewel of Texas, Austin. Times for open interaction with creators are slightly undefined, but specific panels will take place at 6:00pm and 8:00pm Saturday and 10:00am, noon, and 8:00pm Sunday — register for one panel (and one only) by phone: +1 512 454.2399.

  Creators scheduled include out-of-staters Danielle Corsetto, Jeph Jacques, David Willis, and the rarely-seen-in-the-wild Nicholas Gurewitch; proud⁵ Texans include Bill Williams, Joel Watson, Randy Milholland, Rob Den Blyker, and Josh Lesnick. Curiously, no Box Brown connection can be found for this show, possibly bringing to an end his utter domination of webcomic-friendly events for the month of December.

  Then again, there’s still weeks to go before January rolls around.

_______________
¹ 2 December, 2011.

² 3 December, 2011.

³ 4 December, 2011.

⁴ 11-12 December, 2011.

⁵ Undoubtedly, there are varying degrees of pride.

Got invited to be part of something potentially very cool in the 2012 timeframe; can’t wait to see how it might come to fruition. In the meantime, we have a plethora of wondrous things to share today.

• Not webcomics, don’t care — you can now get a print of John Hodgman, Deranged Millionaire and occasional arbiter of disputes. I am bringing this to your attention because it lets me share the fun fact that I played a small part in Hodgman’s efforts to obtain the ferret skeleton in that video. The dead animal supply company I pointed him towards supplied the ferret skeleton in the Ferret Skeleton Room¹. This print is officially Today’s Coolest Thing.
• No, wait, this is: the new Ryan North-penned Adventure Time comic (referenced here) will have one of the covers for its premiere issue done by Becky Dreistadt of Tiny Kitten Teeth. It’s actually become a bit of a misnomer to describe Becky as “of Tiny Kitten Teeth”, as her schedule is increasingly filled with other projects. On the one hand, less TKT and Tigerbuttah; on the other hand, she’s becoming in-demand for her prodigious skills, and it’s just a matter of time before she’s snapped up by some channel or other and put in charge of a string of highly successful animation projects. As much as we in webcomicdom know and love her work, her career is just now starting and I couldn’t be more thrilled for all of her future fame and renown.
• No, wait, maybe this is: just about four weeks in, Child’s Play ’11 is up over the US$1 million mark, which puts the collective effort since 2003 at over $US10 million. And there’s still most of a month and the always massively productive charity dinner/auction to go. Those numbers boggle the mind and humble me; I’m proud to have been a tiny fraction of that effort each year.

_______________
¹ Hooray for helping.

Yeah, so the Washington Post is doing that “Best Webcomic” poll thingy again (cf: last year’s version). I remain deeply ambivalent because it’s asking for categorization based on physical format — webcomic, comic strip (presumably newspaper, although most webcomics are strips), “graphical narratives” (I think that means graphic novels, or maybe comic books?) and animated film. So because of choice of distribution medium, webcomics are all comparable?

Think about this for a moment: comparing (say) Bucko against Family Man (which are produced in the same room, from adjacent drawing tables) makes about as much sense as comparing (say) Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show Comic Book against Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose¹ because they’re both printed in color with floppy covers and staples up the middle.

So webcomics are all webcomics? Fine. I’m nominating Oglaf, SS Myra, and Get Fucked²; at least they’re more comparable than other comics would be to each other. Let’s see if WaPo acknowleges ’em.

• Speaking of Charles Christopher³, a double-size update dropped, along with this note:
  

  See you next week, for the exciting conclusion of Chapter 2!
  -karl

  Given that a chapter means the possibility of a new book, I’m all excited. Oh, heck, I was already excited because Luga showed up again last week, bringing to an end my worry and fretting of more than a month. The wheels of Luga’s justice may grind slowly, but I think in the end both the Chief and Sissi Skunk will have cause to regret their misdeeds.

• Following up from yesterday — the Bradster and the G-Man have revealed their collaboration at the ECCC site, in the form of a weekly gag strip about comic convention goings-on, out front on the floor, in the planning and backstage process, and the inevitable bar circuit. More from Guigar at his blog, but for me the most telling part was his explanation about a key piece of logic — this strip, if done well, will give people a reason to come back to the ECCC website all year round, and not just when they’re specifically gearing up to attend.

  The next EmCity Con isn’t until the end of March, and possibly only the hardest core of attendees are paying much attention to the daily announcements this far out … until now? That’s a lot to ask of a new webcomic, even from two established creators with built-in audiences, but it’s going to be one hell of an interesting experiment, one that I think will be repeated elsewhere in the coming years.

_______________
¹ In the former case, the comic made me laugh; in the latter, the reviews.

² If I felt like doing more than just making a point, I’d have to go with Vattu, The Abmoninable Charles Christopher, and Octopus Pie, which are all character-driven, chapter-oriented, longform stories, and absolutely killing it, each update.

³ I was so, right there, in footnote #2; you think I write these for my amusement? Well, that’s where you’re right.