Still under the weather but awake for some of today. So here’s some brief items, and I’ll see you for regular updates on Monday.

• Lot of press this year about comiXology, especially since the iPad made reading comics on-the-go (and on a screen larger than that of an iPhone) so very easy. They’ve spread into direct support for the other major mobile O/S, with a new comiXology app for Android. While I love my Android phone, it’s a very early model, and apparently the app requires a later version of Android than I’ve got, so no luck to me. And in any event, this probably won’t live up to its potential until the inevitable breakout Android-based tablet (to present, none of the models has made a big hit in the marketplace) sometime in the future. In the meantime, if you’ve got Android 2.1 or higher, let us know what you think.
• Friends of comics The ToonSeum invites friend of comics, webcomic creator, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, consort of the Radness Queen of the 510 Area Code, and (most relevant at the moment) author of The Looney Tunes Treasury Andrew Farago for an appearance and signing on Boxing Day (that would be 26 December) from noon to 2:00pm. Anybody in Pittsburgh, drop by and say “hi” for me; I’d join you, but I pulled Christmas weekend EMS duty and western Pennsylvania is just a little bit outside of response range for any 911 calls we might get. I’ll have to make do with a lot of pie.
• Just bout five years ago, an evil genius named Jon Rosenberg enticed me (and a pair of co-conspirators, but I’m the only one without a life, it seems) to make with the opinion-mongering found here so frequently. Although Fleen officially launched on 22 December 2005, a handful of posts had been written over the prior couple of weeks, so today serves as well as any as an “official” anniversary for this bastard child of hype, opinionmongering, and occasionally non-mangled syntax.

  I’ve never adequately “thanked” Jon for getting me started down the path to hell known as blogging, but it appears that the past few years of attempting to kill him with my mind may have finally had an effect — Rosenberg and his lovely wife Amy are expecting twins come June. This may not prove to be his death, but surely the lack of sleep that it causes will push him ever closer to the edge of madness. This is probably a good place to insert maniacal laughter, but I’ve got a sore throat, so click here for a reasonable facsimile.

  In all seriousness, congratulations to Jon and Amy — twins rule (I should know, I married one) and they can only benefit from having one of the most weirdly creative of all the possible dads in the world. Here’s hoping that they get good and stockpiled on sleep and diapers, and maybe this would be a good time for you to purchase some fine merchandise from him, so that his sproglings need not be clothed in discontinued t-shirts and sleep in a bassinet made of unsold books? Do it for the children.

Painstakingly, I might add. As per my Twitterfeed, locked out of the client-provided computer I’m using for this class (it would be entirely too convenient to let me use my laptop, after all), so this will be short and heavy on cut/paste.

Edit to add: Have computer access back now, not retyping this whole damn thing, but will fix typos and add links.

• Not webcomics, but too bad: Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum is running some classic animated Christmas fare a week from tomorrow. Enjoy A Charlie Brown Christmas (everybody do the repetitive dance!), A Wish For Wings That Work (the definitive performance by Mister The Cat), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick is a genius). Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack (with accompanying cartoon) starts at 6:30, with Bill and Opus at 7:00pm and Jack Skellington at 7:45pm. Suggested donation: five bucks. The ToonSeum is at 945 Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.
• I met Cari Corene at San Diego Comic-Con ’09 when she was Dave Kellett‘s assistant (you could totally tell, because she kept calling him “Mister Kellett”, which is a dangerously large amount of respect to show a cartoonist, lest they get ideas about their station in life). Anywho, Ms Corene did a bang-up job in that year’s sketchbook (theme: beards and moustaches) and she since launched her own webcomics endeavours, DOOR, which is the story of a pug dog and a genie that’s not trapped in the usual bottle or lamp, but ann overhead-tank-pull-chain-type toilet. It’s better than it sounds, with a lot of really neat visuals.

  Chapter 1 made it to a modest print run, and Chapter 2 is up for the same, pending funding. The Kickstarter’s here, and though some people I deeply respect wonder if Kickstarter has outlived its usefulness, for situations like this, I just see it as a pre-order with a bit of structure. Not enough funds raised? You never get charged and don’t have to wait for a refund to get processed. Works for me.

• I didn’t mention yesterday’s A Girl And Her Fed when it ran, but better late than never. Blazing Saddles reference that manages to avoid the obvious fart joke? Classy. Also building up to something just in time for creator “Otter” to take an end-of-year break. If you aren’t reading AGAHF, get going so you can share in my misery.

For those of you that don’t follow my Twitterfeed, the last 24 hours may be summed up thusly:

1. Modern travel schedules are a myth
2. I do not possess sufficient bodily insulation to survive the Minnesota winter
3. The cold has interrupted the food supply chain

It appears that if I do not wish to starve, I must hunt and kill one of the numerous ice weasels that are even now surrounding my current locale, probing for signs of weakness. Assuming I don’t survive this bout of nature, red in tooth and claw, please consider the following:

• Dorothy Gambrell has presented another in her occasional series of financial disclosures in graphical form. One may try to divine truths there, but fact is the sample size (one) means that any conclusions you draw are only partway supported by statistical relevance to the members of the sample population (Gambrell herself), and essentially without application to anybody else. For myself, I think that it approaches a geometric beauty all of its own even when divorced from the monetary meaning.
• Daryl Cunningham, having previously taken apart vaccine opponents, homeopathy proponents, and moon-landing deniers, decided that his inbox and comment threads weren’t filled with enough specious logic and invective (much of it featuring multiple correctly-spelled words) from those that feel differently than he does. Thus, he now tackles the intersection of the scientific, economic, and political, taking a gander at climate change. As always, it’s good comics.

  And as always, the early comments are brief, in aagreement with Cunningham and reasonable; the somewhat later comments are longer, and may contain respectful disagreements on certain points. This means we’re about to hit the point where the entirely unhinged and insane comments make an appearance, so be prepared.

• Eisner nominations are open. As in prior years, the categories are largely restricted to material that ships to bookstores, and Best Webcomic must take the form of:
  

  [L]ong-form stories published online in 2010; webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part
  of a larger comics community

  I’m of the opinion that webcomics shouldn’t have their own catch-all category like this. If (for instance) Karl Kerschl’s art on The Abominable Charles Christopher is as good as his art on Assassin’s Creed (and it is), it should be eligible in the same categories (no disrespect to Kerschl’s co-artist on AC, Cameron Stewart, but Stewart got the Eisner for Sin Titulo last year, so let’s use Kerschl for this example). Ain’t gonna happen this year, but I wonder — if one of the big publishers released a title only in digital form in 2011, what would the awards look like in 2012? Not shipping a comiXology purchase to the stores.

That would be the names of the various work clients that are reminding me why I hate Wall Street (the metaphorical concept, and the actual street just around the corner) with the intensity of a thousand exploding suns. Plus, if you say their names three times, they appear to kill you. Or I get fired. Whichever, not on my to-do list for today. Instead, how about some holiday cheer?

• A followup on last month’s mention of Patrick Rothfuss and the Worldbuilders charity — in his blog, Rothfuss takes a look at the webcomics items that have been donated to help entice you (yes, you!) to support Heifer, International. Lotsa books, and even a couple of in-strip guest appearances up for grabs.
• Know what I could do with right about now? A damn good party, filled with laughter and joy and comics for me to take home and a tall, ruggedly handsome Canadian dude. As long as I’m on the record, I also always wanted a pony, but that hasn’t shown up yet. But the first one remains a possibility, at least for those of you in the Greater Toronto Metrosphere, as one of the great North American comics shops (that would be The Beguiling), run by one of the great North American comics proprietors (that would be TCAF organizer Christopher Butcher) is hosting a book launch for one of the great North American webcomics creators (that would be Ryan North).

  Dinosaur Comics: Dudes Already Know About Chickens will get the fun-times treatment on Tuesday, 21 Dec at 7:30pm (doors 7:00) at Pauper’s Pub, 539 Bloor St West in Toronto. You can even participate in a Secret Santa gift exchange if you like! It’s a Tuesday so I can’t make it (EMS duty, dang), but otherwise nothing would keep from the transnational fun in RYANTOWNE.

• Recently released news from the Stumptown organizers (specifically, showrunner Indigo Kelleigh) that dropped today — table confirmations are going out soon, and there’s a new process you need to know about:
  

  As the Stumptown Comics Fest has grown over the past seven years, demand for space on our exhibitor floor has skyrocketed well beyond our capacity. For the 2010 Fest we managed to fill our 130 exhibitor tables in a three week period, and were left with a sizable waiting list. Moving to a larger venue for 2011 was intended to alleviate some of that problem, but the community’s demand to be a part of the Fest exceeded our expectations, and we are again looking at having a waiting list of over 100 applicants. There is simply no fair way to decide who will get space and who won’t, and so in an effort to maintain the high caliber of exhibitors that people have come to expect from Stumptown, I have decided to curate the exhibition space.

  That’s maybe not the understanding people had when they applied for space, but perfectly reasonable from my point of view. The small-to-midsize shows that prove most successful for creators are all seeing a demand that requires they be selective about who gets in, and finding a good match between exhibitors is arguably preferable to making it a random collection of whoever got the earliest postmarks or timestamps.

  Having corresponded with Kelleigh a bit in the past, I’m confident that in trying to make the show better for exhibitors and attendees, he’s likely made his own job much more difficult, as he’s the sort of guy to agonize over what now needs to be a judgment of relative worth. He’s going to look at work in depth, trying to find the very best representatives he can in the applicants, and not making the cut isn’t him telling you that you suck. He just found somebody else that fit in place better. With the increase in floor space for 2012, hopefully the decisions will be less wrenching for Kelleigh and his staff.

Springtime is usually Neil Cohn time — you remember him, with the surveys of how people read comics — but this time he’s getting a jump on his latest solicitation of experimental test subjects. Despite the scary way I just worded it, if you participate in Cohn’s latest experiment of visual linguistics, you almost certainly won’t end up a gibbering mockery of nature … after all, there aren’t many mad social scientists. Plus, you might win a Best Buy gift card.

• Child’s Play update: given the November 30 total of US$752,000, and the amount raised just last night (from the charity dinner, and a check delivered by the Desert Bus people), but not counting any direct donations over the previous week, 2010’s efforts stand north of US$1.14 million. Wowsers.
• Anniversary times! In the past twenty four hours, we’ve seen both four years of Erfworld (seriously, four years? seems like two, tops) and the 100th page of Spacetrawler. Then again, the first couple of updates were double-sized, so it’s probably more than 100 pages by now, but what the heck — I’m declaring it an official Significant Round Number anyway.

  For those interested in extras and the collegial side of webcomics, the Erfworld page has a nice discussion on lettering and the efforts in redoing work for print, so that you can learn from their experience. And the Spacetrawler page (as well as the previous update) has a list of webcomickers with quality merch available for the holidays, who each have their own lists as well.

  It’s not really in anybody’s direct self-interest to make it easier for potential competitors to produce their wares more easily, or to promote those wares at potentially the expense of your own, which just goes to show you what fundamentally decent people one finds among independent comics creators. Also, were I to point out just one piece of exciting merchandise this season, it would surely be the Sailor Twain prints. Goodness, those are gorgeous.

• Lots of people putting together year-end lists and summaries; I think that I can safely say that 2010 was the year that substantially all the balls were tripped. Top that, 2011!

But first, a quick note. In my discussion Al’Rashad yesterday, I mentioned author Chris Bird a good deal, and did not give enough credit to the artist, Davinder Brar; Bird has pointed out my omission. In my defense, it’s much easier to find information on Davinder Brar, pharmaceutical executive, than it is to find Davinder Brar, comics artist. It appears that Brar’s work is mostly available at his deviantART account, and that Al’Rashad may be his first publicly-discoverable comics work. In which case — holy crap, this is pretty accomplished stuff for what constitutes a rookie outing. Fleen regrets the oversight.

Various places you might want to go, starring various people you may be interested int:

• J Baird, having just passed the fourth anniversary of the Create A Comic Project, is busy putting polish on a presentation — South By Southwest Interactive 2011 have invited him for a solo talk in March on interactive comics and math education:
  

  As a teaching tool, comics are inherently well suited for patterns, geometric shapes, and visual representations of data. They can be a form of stealth teaching — engaging students to think creatively about mathematics, helping instill intrinsic motivation and improving long-term retention…. Navigating the symbolic language of math is a known barrier for many students. Current research into how the brain translates concepts and similarities suggests that comics provide a pathway for alleviating this barrier through the very nature of being “sequential art.” By traversing through each of these stages, a holistic picture of comics’ place in the development of advanced math pedagogical techniques becomes clear.

  Fascinating stuff. And before anybody in the back row starts snickering “pedgogical” refers to the study of teaching and the process of teaching. Perverts. But back to Austin; using the “webcomics” tag in the handy-dandy panel search tool doesn’t turn up any other presentations at SxSWI, but that hasn’t stopped Rosscott of The System from participating in a panel on image manipulation without Photoshop. Anybody else from the community going to be there that I missed?

• It’s sold out, but tonight is the Child’s Play Charity Dinner/Auction, when the cream of gamerdom gets all fancy-dressed and drops major bucks towards charity. Given that this year’s Child’s Play was up over US$750,000 a week ago, the total will in all likelihood eclipse a cool million by this time tomorrow, and almost certainly surpass last year’s US$1.2 million.
• Speaking of Austin, local comic shop Dragon’s Lair will be hosting Webcomics Rampage this weekend. Last year’s event got good reviews from the creators and fans who attended, and no reason to think that this year will be any different. The fun runs 10am to 7pm Saturday and Sunday, with a veritable plethora of webcomickers in attendance. If nothing else, you’ll have Randy Milholland and Danielle Corsetto in the same place, and that’s always good, wholesome fun.
• Advance planning: inspired by today’s opening of San Diego’s Exhibitor Room Requestarama, it looks like the next con after the Rampage is likely Arisia, in a month or so in Boston; Shaenon Garrity will be Webcomic Guest of Honor. Then I don’t think there’s much on deck until Em-City, with its numerous webcomicky guests and exhibitors. Enjoy the break, everybody; it might be cold, but at least it’s relaxing.

I have a dilemma — perhaps even it could be called a Circumstance — involving too many books. Dave Kellett has just announced his eighth sequential collection of Sheldon; I recently obtained the sixth Schlock Mercenary book. Like Kellett Howard Tayler adds to his Well of Strips for Publication at a rate of hundreds per year; Danielle Corsetto, whose fifth Girls With Slingshots collection is now on order. Questionable Content only has one book, but Jeph Jacques will be releasing more than one a year until he’s caught up, which will be in a half-dozen books or so (god help me if Randy Milholland ever starts releasing his Something*Positive backlog in book form).

It used to be that a dedicated reader of comic strips might collect books from one or two creators that were especially liked; at different times I collected volumes of Doonesbury, Foxtrot, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, and that was it — over the first 35 years of my life, only four strips merited book purchase. But now I have literally dozens, from creators who are far closer to the start of their careers than the end (the list above merely recounts the most recent must-adds), and that’s not counting even more creators whose work I enjoy, but I made the strategic decision to not purchase their collections.

Yeah, I know, first world problem, but I wonder if it’s a concern that any of these creators had considered. Fifteen or twenty years into their careers, are they going to run into fans that have actually run out of room for physical artifacts? I may be the canary in the coal mine with this one.

• In other news, Otter always sends me the best stuff (cf: the Rifftrax/Axe Cop sighting two days back), best of all she doesn’t have a book out yet. Oh she will, and sooner than my bookshelves would appreciate (at this point, each new purchase pretty much necessitates the removal of an earlier purchase), but for today she is not contributing to the load-bearing test of my office/library’s floor.

  In any event, she pointed me towards an interesting piece on Why Conventions May Not Be A Good Idea For Creators by Tony DiGerolamo. It dovetails nicely with a discussion in a recent edition of the newly-resurgent Webcomics Weekly; as I recall, Kurtz, Guigar, and Straub took some heat for telling creators that jumping straight into conventions may not have the appeal that it once did. DiGerolamo’s logic approaches from a different direction that Kurtz et. al., but comes to a startlingly similar conclusion. Read and consider well.

• Did everybody see the guest strip Rebecca Clements did for Octopus Pie today? Clements nailed Gran’s style from the first frame while still conceptually (and typographically) referencing Little Nemo in Slumberland and at the same time (perhaps unintentionally) invoking one of the finest pieces of Appalachian literature ever produced. If you should ever come across a short story called The Beard by Fred Chappell, remember that this is what is meant by an elegant sufficiency.
• I’ll admit — I hadn’t heard of Namir Deiter by Isabel Marks before today, but her husband Terrence thought it worth mentioning that today marks Namir Deiter’s 2896th update, or 11th anniversary. And you know what? It is worth mentioning. I dedicate an unholy number of hours each week to this medium, and the fact that a nearly 3000-strip-deep webcomic has been going for more than a decade that I’d never come across exists has ceased to surprise me. I read a about 65 strips regularly, another 50 or 60 irregularly, and am probably familiar with a few hundred beyond that. Statisticians have yet to come up with a term to describe what a drop in the bucket those numbers represent.

It’s not much better out now. Maybe the next day or so will be better?

• You know what’s for wimps, apparently? NaNoWriMo. You know what the true creative make-or-break project is? OnMoAnFe. That would be Ryan Estrada‘s effort in the rain forest of Central America for the month of December — the One Month Animated Feature:
  

  It’s always been my dream to make an animated feature, but I’ve never been able to get the time and resources I need. Well, I’m sick of waiting. This December, I’m sitting down at my desk in the Costa Rican jungle to work. And on January 1st, I’m releasing the finished movie online, free to all.

  For anybody else, I’d say it was probably suicidal; for Estrada (veteran of the 168 hour comic), I’d call it merely semi-insane, but unlikely to produce permanent mental harm. Everybody send Estrada some good vibes tomorrow as he begins his descent into Ultimate Crunch Time.

• Speaking of tomorrow, congrats to Christian Fundin and Pontus Madsen, who will celebrate ten years of deceptively-cute-yet-foul-intentioned (in the best way possible) updates over at Little Gamers.
• Still speaking of tomorrow, I get to flip over the card in my 2010 Wondermark calendar from November to December; I wonder what ribaldry and/or misery will await me in all of its artisanal screen-printed glory? Also, to ensure that another 12 months of inappropriate thoughts continue, I ordered my calendar cards for 2011 today, and urge you to do likewise, as they exist in an extremely limited edition of under 200.

  Watching screenprinting, letterpressing, typebothering and old-style ink-manipulations of every kind is utterly fascinating to me (and also to a statistically unusually large number of the readers of this page — as compared to the general population), so while the rest of you go enjoy a refreshing beverage or snack, we will be enjoying a short video documentary on the creation of the 2008 edition.

• Hey, you’re reading Zahra’s Paradise, right? The first webcomic launched under the imprimatur of the creative wünderkinden over at :01 Books about life in modern Iran, and the search for a disappeared protestor is just now starting a storyline on Iran’s secret prisons:
  

  Kahrizak is the incarceration center where so many protestors disappeared to. It was eventually closed when it became public
  knowledge, and an embarrassment for the regime.

  In this chapter, the blogger [and narrator of the story] receives news: one of his friends who was missing, Ali, has been released and has returned home. Everyone rejoices, and they gather to celebrate. But Ali does not want to celebrate; his experiences in prison have been
  traumatic. He does have a message for the blogger, though: his brother, Mehdi, was held with him in Kahrizak, where the government moved
  troublesome people it wanted out of the normal system, inaccessible to any pleas for help.

  The creators of Zahra’s Paradise, Amir and Khalil (anonymous for obvious reasons) have done their homework throughout the story, but given that Kahrizak is based on the accounts of people who have seen the inside of the secret prisons, it’s likely that this chapter will be especially harrowing, and important. If you haven’t been reading, this is the time to jump in.

Multiple disciplines suggest themselves in today’s stories; it’s like an Ig Nobel in miniature around here.

• Chemistry
  Back in my college days (ah, nerd school) we had a simple test to determine what items went in which department — things that fell down were Civil Engineering, things that moved around and made noise were Mechanical Engineering, things that made your hair stand on end were Electrical Engineering, and things that smelled funky were Chemistry¹.

  Years later, I found myself doing a week’s work at a manufacturing facility of a flavoring and fragrances company and I was struck by the near total absence of any scents whatsoever — like the magic of chemistry had sucked out all of the olfactory noise that would prevent testers from judging tastes and scents on an isolated, objective basis. I wonder if Kaja Foglio knows what I’m talking about.

  This isn’t some idle speculation — Professora Foglio likely has experienced the odor equivalent of a sensory-deprivation chamber because she’s recently wrapped up the development of ZOMG Smells (noted geeks perfumers) development of a line of Girl Genius perfumes. Whether you want to smell like a Jägermonster, a madboy Spark! I meant Spark!, or the aftermath of the Nuremberg Pudding Incident (not to be confused with the Noodle Incident), ZOMG Smells (and shortly, the Studio Foglio online store and con booth) have you covered.

  If anybody knows of another webcomic that’s inspired a line of perfume, let me know. Since we’ve had songs recorded by/about webcomic characters (cf: Deathmøle, Dinosaur Comics: The Opera), interactive animations (cf: MS Paint Adventures, Dinosaur Comics again), recipes inspired by webcomics (cf: Webcomics: What’s Cooking?) and now perfume, I guess the only sense left to tie in would be touch. How long before we see a line of Girls With Slingshots sex toys?

• Economics (it’s sort of a science)
  Speaking of Girls With Slingshots, one may note that Danielle Corsetto has a brand-new design to her website, complete with spankin’ new RSS feed, blog capability, twitterfeed, con schedule, alt text, and the works. If you didn’t read Corsetto’s intro to the new design (and kudos to Tyler Martin for his work — it looks great) you might be confused by the list of conventions for 2011 where she notes she’ll be at the Blind Ferrett booth. If you did read the posting, you may have noticed that GWS has joined up with Blind Ferret — hosting, storefront, merchandise fulfillment, book publishing, handy excuse to head to Montréal every few weeks for “business meetings” (and absolutely not to enjoy a fabulous city full of comickin’ people).

  This is a big deal for Corsetto, and possibly a bigger one for Blind Ferret, who are now branching out into the sort of webcomics services-for-hire that this page has called for (and international/binlingual in scope, too); between the seeing-impaired mustelids and the toxic sentient solanid, those top-tier webcomickers that need business services appear to be better supplied than ever. Exciting times.

• Temporal Mechanics (okay, it might be Star Trek science, but it’s at least sciencey, right?)
  Michael Payne wrote to point out something important is happening next Friday, besides the expected post-American Thanksgiving tryptophan coma: the Daily Grind Ironman Challenge will cross 1500 updates. There are still six of the original 56 contestants duking it out for the status of Last Webcomicker Standing and the fabulous prize of $1120. How long is that, really?

  Long enough that most of the Final Six are actually approaching 2000 to 3000 updates in their comics, since they were merely hopping into the contest with whatever comic was actually running at the time. Long enough for contestants like Dean Trippe, John Campbell, Brian Fukushima, and Natasha Allegri (to name but a few) to build careers since they got knocked out, careers so notable that it’s a surprise to look down the list and say, “Crap, they were in that contest five years ago?” Long enough that the contest had already seen its field winnowed by half before I started my hack webcomics pseduo-journalism.

  Heck, it’s even been long enough for Brad Guigar to grow a sweet moustache/chinbeard combo and get a pair of contacts (compare/contrast). So to all of the remaining Iron Men, we at Fleen say well done and geez, are you gonna make us wait another 1500 days to see who wins this thing. Just bow out together and split the money.

_______________
¹ In large quantities, things that smelled funky qualified as Chemical Engineering.

There are people that do work (wholly or partially) outside the realm webcomics that merit interest on a regular basis. Let’s check in with some of them, shall we?

• Andrew Farago (Friend o’ Fleen, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, creator of The Chronicles of William Bazillion and betrothed of the Funk Queen of the 510 area code) has a love of Looney Tunes that rivals my own. So it should come as no surprise that not only has he written a big damn book all about these animated jewels, he got Ruth Clampett to write the forward, and he’s put together what may be the definitive gallery show on Looney Tunes.

  Seriously, he’s got Bob McKimson featured and over 60 originals for the walls. I collected Chuck Jones animation originals for ten years before everything worth having wound up in private hands, and in that time I never saw Looney Tunes originals for sale. Much like how you’ll have to pry my Grinch-and-Max from my cold, dead hands, I imagine it took Farago years to convince owners to lend their treasures. Overture: Looney Tunes Behind the Scenes opens on 4 December and runs until May 2011; if you’re anywhere near San Francisco, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

• If you haven’t seen this interview with Sergio Aragonés at The AV Club, stop what you’re doing and read it now. Read about how he determined he had to not only become a much better cartoonist, but quickly. Read about how he never stops drawing. Read about shifting tools and techniques to the presentation of the material. And don’t forget the money quote:
  

  Fortunately, cartooning is not a job. It’s something like eating or sleeping. It comes so natural, because I’ve done it all my life since I was a kid. The job is divided into parts—the writing part of it or the drawing part of it. It’s a 24-hour job, because sometimes I go to bed and I have to get up because the idea is there and you can’t stop doing it.

• Mentioned during the Kurtz/Guigar/Roberts roundtable on digital comics and the future was this little gem:
  

  Roberts: Actually, we announced today something we call self-authoring tools. This basically takes the responsibility for getting the work done and putting it in the hands of the creators, and we become more like Apple, acting as the curator instead of the publisher. You submit it, you do all the work, you get a bigger rev[enue]-share. Now I have to bring it up: motion comics. In motion comics, I see a move by the big publishers to reassert their dominance, because you have to have the resources to do it. It requires skilled people that cost money, and that kind of opens the divide. If people like motion comics, it pulls us back from independent creators.

  Followup time. This morning comiXology announced an early adopters scheme for authors to get in on what Roberts promised last month. Let’s cherry-pick a few good bits, shall we?

  The private, invitation-only Alpha program (recently launched with TOKYOPOP, Devil’s Due, and a few others) provides creators and publishers with a tool-set to prepare their comics for comiXology’s patent-pending Guided View.

  Translation: you don’t have to be Marvel or DC to get into comiXology’s distribution stream.

  Once the Alpha phase is completed, comiXology will open more spots for a limited Beta testing of the tools to more creators. The final product will be part of a comprehensive online system, allowing seamless submission for digital publishing for all comic book creators and publishers in an iTunes-like model. Creators and publishers can sign up for a Beta spot at http://www.comixology.com/self_authoring_signup/.

  Translation: early bird gets the worm. Of course, Calvin once remarked that a mouthful of worm isn’t exactly the biggest reason to get out of bed, but since comiXology are the closest thing to a sure bet in the forthcoming format fights right now, it’s worth getting a good look-over while you can. You don’t want to be the one creator whose adorable little tyke looks up and asks, “What did you do in the format wars, Gender-Neutral Term for Parent?”

• Pretty much directly related to webcomics: Cocksuckers. That is to say, the period vampire collaboration webcomic from Magnolia Porter and Kel McDonald, the creation of which is being documented in a series of streams. McDonald has posted the first couple at the Blank Label homepage, and future installments will be announced on both her twitter and Porter’s. Keep the dick jokes to a minimum, people.