Few final thoughts on this year’s iteration before we wrap up the coverage.

• Funniest and most heartwarming thing: during the annual NEWW Awards ceremony (which wrapped up the weekend), showrunner Meredith Gran announced that the fine folks at Squishables had provided a number of their enormous stuffed animals as giveaways, but wasn’t certain how to determine recipients. A suggestion from the crowd resulted in a half-dozen arm-wrestling matches for honor and prizes (a distant view of which can be seen in the bottom row of photos, immediately to the left of the bemused Jeff Rowland). During the goodbyes, many of the champion arm-wrestlers were seen to be giving their prizes to other attendees who had kids. Awwww! Also, do not ever challenge Abby Lehrke to arm-wrestle, as she will school you like Stallone.
• Documentary evidence of the weekend continues to issue forth, of the illustrative and photographic varieties.
• Best webcomic recommendation coming out of NEWW, via Spike: Ectopiary. Dang, this thing is pretty.
• Not NEWW: via webcomics überfan (seriously, his reading list puts mine to shame by an order of magnitude) Michael Kinyon comes a pointer to a series of strips building up to today’s Remembrance/Veteran’s Day: Crowbar Benson depicting actual letters home from The Great War, letters of some impact.

But before we get started, let me point out that Jeph Jacques is doing his level best to displace John Allison as the reigning King of Fan-Fiction. Okay, so Jacques did his in-strip, but you can’t tell me that he didn’t enjoy writing this:

Also Hermione and Ginny were both 25 years old and NOT married to Ron and Harry because the epilogue at the end of the last book is STUPID and NEVER HAPPENED.

Which eventually leads to:

So they totally had sex, and it was the most amazing sex in the history of wizarding or muggles or even Space Wizards (who had a lot of sex but it was really bad sex because they were all evil).

• Speaking of Jeph Jacques, I have now a copy of Questionable Content Volume 1, which came with the news that Jacques plans to do a similarly-sized book every nine months or so until he’s caught up. Look for Volume 2 around San Diego time.
• Speaking of John Allison, I picked up his newest book at NEWW — the very limited, convention-only A Feral Flag Will Fly. I enjoy Bad Machinëry to the extent that, although we are presently getting a five-days-a-week Esther story (and Esther is my absolute favorite SGR character), I find myself counting the days until BM and those mystery-solving youths return. AFFWF has soothed my soul until the wait is done.
• Completing the book-buying trifecta, I now also have a copy of Howard Tayler’s sixth Schlock Mercenary collection, Resident Mad Scientist. Much like AFFWF and QCv1, RSM features an oversize trim, a good “in the hand” feel, and a story that is richer, funnier, and more enjoyable for being presented in large chunks. Excellent reads, all three.
• Not full books, but still from NEWW: I purchased David McGuire‘s latest mini, Marty’s Big Day (no link, sorry), the story of a cat having the best first day as cat ever — fifteen minutes in, he’s on furniture scratching duty and they think they’ll move him up to shedding and hairballs within a week! Lots of fun, and an excellent use of McGuire’s clean, heavy-lined, angry-eyed style.

  Also on the mini front, Sophie Goldstein was kind enough to give me copies of her two minis (again, no link), one a collection of hourlies from her time teaching English in Korea (dated 2009-2010), and one a pair of stories about her father (dated 2006).

  The art styles are obviously different (you have to go simple on hourlies), but each fits the tone of the book. The father stories are particularly strong, recounting a visit to Goldstein’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandmother and a terrifying dream of monsters (with her balding, bespectacled, utterly badass father to the rescue). Very different from her work on Darwin Carmichel, very moving work.

• Recurring theme at NEWW: Garies. There exists somewhere a picture of Evan Dahm in the Garies shirt, standing next to me for the absolute maximum amount of Garies. The only thing that could have increased the Gary-count would be if I had been wearing the GARY shirt, but as we all know, that may well have resulted in a Gary singularity.
• Speaking of singularities, Mr Dahm was on a panel with Mr Diaz, Ms Spike, Ms Baillie, and Mr Riley on the topic of worldbuilding; an audio recording of said panel is now available, which saves me the trouble of typing up my notes.

  But be sure to particularly pay attention about halfway through when the topic turned to the nature of comics itself, and particularly the ability of comics to present background information and foreground information simultaneously and in appropriate weightings, something all but impossible in prose. Heady stuff from people who have clearly thought about comics.

• Finally, some of the discussion I had with David Malki ! regarding Machine of Death is now public: agreements have been agreed, and MoD is due in bookstores across the US in the next three weeks.

Okay, it’s been a long day of going through notes recollections of the immediate past weekend, whilst simultaneously trying to get back to regular life (boo). One of the things about NEWW that stuck with me was an offhand comment (and I’m sorry, I didn’t note who observed this bit of truth) that this wasn’t the show where you’d see a lot of big announcements. I think that’s partly because it’s at the very end of the con season, partly because any such announcements will be possibly more effective next week as the end-of-year merch sales pick up, and partly because it’s not a commerce-centric show.

Make no mistake, there was plenty of merchandise, with creator after creator selling and taking commissions at their tables (along with two merchandise rooms for collective business groups), but it was a lot more about recognizing the creators, the fans, and the peculiar bond between them. So much of what’s below weren’t announcements, but just things that came up because that’s where the conversation (and the booze) took us.

• During setup (some Friday evening, some Saturday morning), Erika Moen was omnipresent. And that pile of Squishable T-Rexes and Yelling Birds? I flung myself on it like it was a leaf pile and bounced. Less than 15 minutes after show opening on Saturday, it was all but invisible.
• The Eastworks building is dog-friendly. In addition to two of the three most famous webcomicker dogs (alas, Commissioner James Gordon couldn’t make it this year), there were numerous people from the area that walked their dogs through the building. The whippets I met on Saturday morning were especially adorable.
• Ongoing debate for the weekend — is Aaron “Latin Artthrob” Diaz dapper, or tweedy? I’m tending towards the former. Regardless, his new print is gorgeous in person; monitor resolution, no matter how high, does not do it justice.
• Evan Dahm (foreground, with the disembodied headwear of Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota behind him) tells us that Order of Tales book 3 will be released soon, and even more excitingly, there will be a one-volume edition next year, with a foreword by Jeff Smith. Speaking of Yuko and Ananth, everybody agreed that Yuko’s artwork for the VIP show sketchbooks (with wonderfully thick paper that didn’t let Sharpies bleed through) was a marvel. Also, George Rohac agreed with me that Yuko and Ananth should make up giant “George’s smile” masks, if only so that he can wear one at shows.
• Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt (Gibson’s hands visible behind Karl Kerschl, followed by Dreistadt, then Scott Yoshinaga and Audra Furuichi) are working on a graphic novel for ______ and getting ready to put together a ______ for ______! Wow! Okay, yeah, they can’t talk about all of their stuff now, but trust me — it was amazing. Speaking of Kerschl, he wins Best Business Card In The History Of Business Cards, thanks to a printer’s overrun: the two-sided, four-page gatefold from the back of the Charles Christopher book, with it’s full cast illustration? That was his business card.
• David Malki ! (no photo, he was a blur of motion all weekend) has weeks and months related to Machine of Death in the immediate future, but did manage to slow down long enough to give us a hard number: 5000 copies sold on Day One; even more impressive: you will eventually hear about the numbers after Day One.
• Magnolia Porter (seen waaaay back in both this photo — behind Chris Hallbeck, Randy Milholland, and Spike — and this one — behind Angela Melick, Tyson Hesse, David McGuire, and Kel McDonald) is working on a graphic novel that may become a Xeric contender. She will also be collaborating with McDonald on “Cocksuckers”, a period vampire story. Also, her Ben Bailey print is going to be a gift to my wife, who loves Cash Cab; shhh, nobody tell her.
• Here’s a better photo of Angela Melick’s “Red” — the highly personalized jacket of an engineering student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Ms Melick, by the by, is even as we speak winging her way with her husband on a delayed honeymoon to Thailand, and was relieved to see that her copy of Machine of Death did not come with a slip that said PLANE CRASH, THAI POLITICAL UNREST RIOT or HIDEOUS TROPICAL DISEASE. Come back safe, Jam.
• Team Topatoco honcho Kaliis Smith (seen here giving the volunteers their pre-show briefing, including a bit on the importance of high reflectivity) gave us the low-down on what “sold out” meant for NEWW on Saturday: 1000 tickets sold (plus weekend and VIP passes). On that note, the volunteers were awesome (one of the most common sights during the weekend was watching one of them wheel a cart of snacks and water to the exhibitors) and thanks to the greater exhibit space and compelling programming, meant that the floor felt less crowded than last year, despite at least 25% more attendees.
• Speaking of the programming, this is the Best. Panel room. EVER. Everything from in-depth discussions of world-building to all-out Jean-Luc Picard lovefests took place on these couches, under the gaze of Socrates.
• Also on those couches (and elsewhere in Eastworks), Dave Kellett (with David and Maggie Willis in the background) used the set as interview space for a documentary film he is currently working on — more about which tomorrow.
• Jorge Cham has the most amazing hair in webcomics. Howard Tayler (my nemesis and evil twin) does not. Emily Vasseur was the second-most impressive cosplayer at the show, outshone only by the duo of Reginald and Beartato (I later saw the gentleman in the Reginald costume remove his headpiece and while I felt it would have been disrespectful to snap a photo of him half-clad, I will note that he had a prodigious moustache — respect, my brother). I also hear that Reginald and Beartato may be making an appearance in Reprographics soon.
• Danielle Corsetto (with Jenn Jordan and Sophie Goldstein in the background) had so many people lining up at her table, she was declared a fire hazard and moved closer the the exits on Sunday. She also let us know that GWS book five will drop in time for Christmas, and that there are other big announcements between now and the end of the month.
• Best merch of the show? Either the new Baffler! by Chris Yates line of puzzles, or the do it yourself Dinosaur Comics whiteboard.

NEWW rocked. More later.

By the time you read this, I will be on my way to the Pioneer Valley, and the Great Gathering of Webcomics therein. Since I know that you’re probably already thinking about what else could be coming up in the Wide World o’ Webcomics, how about an advanced notice?

SPX dates have been announced for 2011, and it’s basically the same weekend that it was this year: Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11. Applications for tables open 1 January at the SPX website, which would be the same time that table prices go up for next year’s MoCCA Festival.

Okay, that’s it. See you at the pub crawl tonight, and at Eastworks tomorrow.

Also created for NEWW2VIP attendees: a custom sketchbook, with design work by Yuko Ota of Johnny Wander.

• It might seem like last week’s news, but there’s more Machine of Death happenings, as the free, downloadable PDF (including illustrations!) makes it way into existence, and the first audio recording of a MoD story hits the new MoD podcast page. That would be NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING, written and read by Erin McKean, available for streaming or download, as well as subscribing via iTunes.
• In case you missed it, MoCCA Festival 2011 tables are now available. As in past years, there’s a sliding scale on table fees, depending on whether you’re a member or not, a student or not, getting a full table or not, and get your application in by 31 December or not:
  

  MoCCA Member Full Table: $360
  General Full Table: $399
  MoCCA Member 1/2 Table: $210
  General 1/2 Table: $250
  Student Full Table: $295
  Student 1/2 Table: $177

  Students must submit ID with the application, and prices go up 1 January. Application forms [PDF] accepted by mail, email (exhibitors@moccany.org), in person, and for those of you that still have one, by fax (212-254-3590).

• So for a number of years, there were the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards, which have gone away; things like this often live or die by the efforts of a small group (sometimes as few as one or two) of people. Popping up to fill the void last year was a new slate of awards by The Webcomic List, to recognise the best that online comics have to offer and nominations are open to everyone involved in the creation, promotion or distribution of comics. Big difference between the WCCAs and the WCLAs is that the latter have a juried component, rather than purely open voting.

  Time will tell if this leads to viable, credible awards over the long term, but some of the names involved in this year’s organization and judging process would tend to give one hope. If nothing else, we won’t be waiting until summer 2011 to find out about good work from calendar year 2010. Anyway, nominations open on 8 November and run for six weeks, with the awards being announced on 31 January. Rules can be found here, and the categories covered in the awards are:

  • Best Comic
  • Best New Comic — for webcomics launched on or after the first of November 2009
  • Best Colour Art
  • Best Black and White Art
  • Best Non-traditional Art — covering all artistic techniques other than conventional drawn images, such as photography, pixel art and 3D art
  • Best Writing
  • Best Character
  • Best Gag-a-day Comic
  • Best Longform Comic

  Nominations will run from the 8th of November until the 20th of December after which the comics with the highest nominations will be handed to a panel of judges who will pick the winners in each category to be announced in an online illustrated ceremony on the 31st of January next year.

Name-Is-Ed, approximately 25 years of age, died killing a god and a demon. Survivors include the hyena tribe that disowned him, the wombat that befriended him, and some underground critters that love purple dye.

• In much cheerier news, I’ve had a sneak peek at NEWW programming (it may even be live by the time this goes up), and there’s some real gems on the list; please enjoy this smattering of topics:
  

  Main Panel Room
  Comics and Worldbuilding
  Saturday 1:30 – 2:30 PM
  Join creators of elaborate fantasy worlds as they discuss what goes into their creative process.

  Chris Hastings Interviews John Allison
  Sunday 1:30 – 2:30 PM
  Dr. McNinja writer and artist Chris Hasting interviews Bad Machinery/Scary Go Round visionary John Allison. It will be magic.

  Chamber of Mystery Room
  Tweet Me Harder Livecast
  Saturday 1:30 – 2:30 PM
  Join David Malki ! live in the studio, and Kris Straub via screencast, for an inevitably hilarious episode of Tweet Me Harder!

  Strange Tales From the Internet
  Sunday 3:00 – 4:00 PM
  Join a cast of creators as they discuss some of their unexpected hits, misses and out-of-left-field moments on the internet this year.

  There’s a dozen more events planned, and plenty of mystery guests slated to appear on the panels, so be ready for fun.

• In my haste to congratulate Kate Beaton on her Lulu Award yesterday, I completely overlooked Diana Nock’s win of the Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work for The Intrepid Girlbot. This is because I had a heapin’ bowl of Stupid Flakes for breakfast. Many thanks to Webcomics Uberfan Michael Kinyon for the catch, and many apologies to Ms Nock for the oversight.
• New PBF! And along with it, links to the animated shorts that were shown at SDCC this summer. Check them out!

NEWW2 (Electric Boogaloo) is nearly upon us! Glee! Also, you have approximately 43.5 hours as of this writing to pre-order your badge, after which it’s first-come, first-serve.

• Ryan Pequin: nascent moustache guy. Mr Pequin is growing out the facial hair for charity during the month of November (although not reekin’ of tainted CO-LOG-NUM). Which just kind of begs the question — wouldn’t a November-based moustachery effort call for The Zappa? I’m telling you nice peoples, The Zappa always gets overlooked, even when moustaches get the love (photo courtesy David Willis).
• Spread far and wide via twittering over Halloween weekend: His Face All Red by Emily Carroll. Moody, spooky, gorgeously illustrated, and subject to multiple interpretations. This is incredibly good work and if you’re the one person that statistically hasn’t seen it yet, let me add my voice to the chorus that you really ought to.
• The possibly-annual-again Friends of Lulu Awards were held over the weekend at the Long Beach Comic Con, and the Lulu of the Year award (“For the creator, book or other entity whose work best exemplifies Friends of Lulu’s mission statement”) went to Kate Beaton. Since Ms Beaton is ridiculously talented, and is becoming more and more widely recognized with each passing day, this seems only meet and proper. Everybody be happy for Kate!
• If you’ve been over to the (recently rebuilt) site of Christopher Wright’s long-running (and recently back from hiatus) Help Desk, you may have noticed a series of posts regarding some technical aspects of running independent websites. Something about “encrypted cookies” and “signed certificates” and my head hurts, ouch (that last part was me, not Wright). Fortunately, he broke the issue into short sentences in an email:
  

  So here’s the deal. A lot of us who run our own sites don’t really have a really technical background or any deep knowledge of the finer points in securing a website. Unfortunately, the plugin I’m talking about in my post potentially hurts us and our readers more than your average web administrator because we don’t know these things, and it’s something we’re going to have to start thinking about.

  Larger sites are probably more at risk because they have users who are more likely to register accounts, but at the same time they probably have more resources (and tech-savvy assistance) to work around the problem. The rest of us either have to take the time to learn how to adapt, or to get used to driving down a back road at 150mph in a car without seatbelts that can swerve off the road without warning.

  The plugin that Wright mentioned is for Firefox, and it’s called Firesheep; in a nutshell, it allows somebody to piggyback onto the logged-in sessions of others (primarily over WiFi) by sniffing cookies out of the air. There’s a very good primer on what it all means over at El Reg, and the aforementioned series of posts (which really won’t hurt your head) detail Wright’s attempts to secure his site against the threat that Firesheep represents. The last one is pretty close to a step-by-step guide, so make sure you read it carefully even if you just skim the others.

  Bottom line (and Wright is to be commended for both recognizing the threat, and wanting to spread the word in the webcomics community), if you run your own site and have accounts, you need to re-think your processes. If you don’t run your own site and have accounts, you need to get the people that run it for you to re-think your processes. Do it now before you get compromised.

Know what’s a good age? Twelve. Kids have a bit of rationality and ability to hold a conversation, and haven’t quite hit the full depths of their teen (or ‘snotty’) years. It’s possible that twelve is the last time you’ll be able to tolerate a kid for a half-decade or more. Also? Krishna Sadasivam’s PC Weenies have been around in one form or another for twelve years now. That’s like 328 in internet years.

• Krishna, unfortunately, won’t be able to make it to New England Webcomics Weekend 2 (Electric Boogaloo) in a couple of weeks (having previously committed to Up!Fair the following week), but if you’re going to be at NEWW2 (EB), your life just got a little easier:
  

  Thanks to you folks buying tickets, we’ve found a small budget to run a hotel shuttle to Eastworks from the Clarion Hotel in Northampton. You should please use the shuttle if you can rather than drive over to help cut down on traffic and parking at the show.

  Rather than waste money on a real driver, you’re getting a cartoonist. R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties is a local and has volunteered to ride the bus. The “R” stands for “Richard” and you can look for this jacket:

  The NEWW Shuttlecraft will run from approximately 9:30AM-12:00 noon both Saturday and Sunday of the show.

  There will also be a return shuttle directly after the show. We’ll work those hours out at the event in case things run late.

  I can vouch for Mr Stevens; aside from being the sexiest man in webcomics (narrowly edging out The Toronto Man-Mountain and El Beardo), I’ve ridden in vehicles piloted by him, and he’s a safe and courteous driver. All aboard the sexy bus.

• Word comes via Twitter that Jeph Jacques has made a couple zillion readers (including, perhaps the odd college-age cute girl) very happy, with his announcement of A Very Special Book:
  

  QC VOLUME 1 GOES ON SALE SOME TIME TOMORROW AT TOPATOCO.

  This would be the book covering the early days of QC (with a fair amount of re-drawery), which means that volumes 2 through whatever still have a good six years of strips to catch up on, so plenty of pages still to go, y’all. TopatoCo haven’t posted the info yet (as of this writing), but when they do, odds are good it’ll be here.

• Update to the somewhat recent Machine of Death update: the book is now available via Amazon (and in future, other outlets), but the compilers request that you not buy it until Tuesday, October 26th. Let’s let Mr Malki ! do the explaining:
  Here is the significance of October 26 specifically:

  It only takes a few hundred sales in a short time to become a Number One bestseller on Amazon.com.

  So even though the book is available for purchase now, we want to concentrate all the attention onto October 26. Blog about it, tweet about it, invite your friends to the Facebook event — just spread the word that October 26 is the day to buy Machine of Death on Amazon.

  The simple truth is that we probably can’t compete on the shelves at Barnes & Noble alongside every other book in the world. The agents and the publishers are right; it might not work for a mass market. That’s okay. We don’t need to sell it to everyone. We don’t need to sell 100,000 copies; we don’t have the rent on a New York office to pay for.

  We only need to sell it to you.

  On October 26, we want to send a message that a little project dragged kicking and screaming from “crazy idea” past “it’ll never work” all the way to “By God, they actually did it” can make a big splash. We’re internet people; you are too. We want to prove to all the people who said “this will never sell” that internet people make things happen. [emphasis original]

  Hell, I’ve waiting four years, I can wait another five days to place the order. See you all at Amazon on Tuesday.

So here’s the deal — somebody out there needs to contract a terminal disease, and then on Tuesdays they hang out with me, I learn all kinds of life lessons, and then when they die, I write a bestselling book that Oprah loves and get rich. While waiting to be contacted by volunteers, I have some few things to commend to your attention.

• Everybody saw the new episode of Adventure Time ‘tother night, with the visual reference to Kate Beaton‘s funniest creation, the fat pony? If not, the fine folks at The AV Club have got a recap for you.
• New resource site for webcomics creators: Webcomic Alliance blurs the line between “site providing information and help to creators” (as in Webcomics Dot Com or Webcomics Community) and “collective of creators with common interests”. Some interesting things to be found at WA, which were enough to overcome my innate aversion to talking about anything where the press release is PDF and thus not easily copy/paste quote-mineable. Remember, kids: [hack webcomics pseduo-] journalists are a lazy people, and you want to make it as easy as possible for them to pimp your project. Also, PDFs are the Devil’s handiwork.
• From reader Simon Cadaver:
  

  Was just wondering if there’s been many webcomics that have been turned into video games? I noticed that the Blade Kitten webcomic has been turned into a video game that came out a week or two ago on Xbox, PS3 etc.

  I guess Penny Arcade hold the honor of being the first … but it’s still a great trend I’d love to see more of! Axecop videogame would be amazing if the Blade Kitten team did it. CHOP

  Slightly tortured syntax aside, Simon’s got a point; I can’t think of too many fans of Los Bros. Nicolle that wouldn’t find it entirely worthwhile to chop their way through crime via the home console. Heck, making unicorn horns powerups and try-outs the game tutorial sounds like a winner.

• Not webcomics, but too damn bad: The ToonSeum in Pittsburgh will be running an exhibit of the art of Carroll Spinney from 6 November to 30 January. If that name sounds familiar but you just can’t quite place it, it’s because Mr Spinney owns your childhood memories, being the performer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. Admit it — the thought of meeting him puts a smile of wonder on your face. Spinney will be at the ToonSeum on the evening of 6 November in conjunction with the annual Ka-Blam! The Return of Saturday Mornings fundraiser.
• The new (and very pretty) rendition of the Schlock Mercenary site is up, minus one formerly-key feature:
  

  Of the valid complaints about the new site, the one that affected the most people was the sudden absence of the linked list of comics.

  If you’re looking for comics recommendations, if you’re passionate about sequential art and want to get the latest news and views on the matter, nobody is better qualified than Gary “three Rs, two Ls” Tyrrell over at Fleen. And he’s got a long, long list of comics in the sidebar, every one of which has strong points that recommend it to the discerning reader.

  Aw, thanks, Howard. I’ll do my best to treat your readers correctly. What’s that? There’s more?

  (Okay, he’s missing Atland, which is still one of my favorites, but other than that he’s spot on. Unless he’s missed another of my current favorites, in which case he sucks rocks.)

  Rocks? Rocks, Howard? That’s it, we’re not evil twins anymore.¹

_______________
¹ Oh, who am I kidding? Like I could remain angry with you. We’re totally still evil twins.