Zach Weiner (or is it “Weinersmith” yet?) dropped his 2000th update of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal with a discussion of pure Plotonium. But then I saw his SMBC Theater cohort JP Nickel (I think he’s particularly funny matched up against James Ashby in this short) dropping an intriguing piece of news:

@smbctheater will have its own panel at NYC ComicCon in October! @ZachWeiner @jsandlinashby @FuSchmu The Mrs. & I will be speaking!

NYCC’s programming & panel schedule isn’t set to go live until tomorrow (curses!), but when it does, you should find the time & location of the SMBCfest here. Don’t let the fact that nearly every character in the SMBC Theater shorts is a horrible, horrible person — I’ve met a bunch of them and they’re only one level of horrible at most.

• Speaking of NYCC, the exhibitor list is pretty complete, and webcomics are pretty well represented, from ACT-I-VATE to Webcomics Dot Com.
• The Friends of Lulu awards make a return this year (to be given out at the Long Beach Comic Con Halloween weekend), and public voting is now open. I thought I’d mention it because the Lulu awards do something that you don’t usually see: rather than throw webcomics into a single catch-all category (which can find creations wildly different in scope, subject, and tone treated as comparable), they’re distributed throughout the list. Thus, you have webcomics contending for recognitions as wide as Best Female Character, Lulu of the Year, and the Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer.
• Welcome back to Randy Milholland who had a nasty sore throat that made his drawing elbow lock up. No, really. It’s so improbable and unlikely, it could only happen to a webcomicker; at least we may get some good Life With Rippy strips out of it.
• Finally, we at Fleen have been known to refer to certain members of our community by nicknames; one perennial usage has exploited the fact that Dresden Codak‘s creator shares a name with a Mexican singer/actor, thus making Aaron Diaz webcomics’ own Latin Heartthrob. Today, however, he is re-christened as ALP creator Bernie Hou made the logical leap and observed that Diaz is actually our Latin Art-throb. >slow clap< Well done, sir. Well done.

Because I really just want to eat dinner.

• New con on the calendar: Pittsburgh’s ToonSeum is starting up PIX: the Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo, on the weekend of 16 – 17 October. The focus will be on creator-owned, self-published, small-press, and handmade comics, with free admission; the venue will be the top floor of the Guardian Storage facility, at 2839 Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, just outside of downtown [editor’s note: it does not appear that the Strip District refers to either comic strips, nor the “tease” kind]. Tables are a rock-bottom $25 (yes, twenty-five dollars) until 2 October, when they soar to a still unreasonably cheap $40. Anybody looking at this one?
• Recent Big Round Numbers: 9 years of Wapsi Square as of last Thursday; six years of Commissioned Comics as of last Friday. That puts creators Paul Taylor and Obsidian at about 2000 and 1500 strips, respectively.
• Interview at Washinton Post‘s Comic Riffs blog with Ted Rall on The Great Cartoonist Warzone Pilgrimage of Twenty-Ten.

I’m not actually in anything approaching the mood of my man Roast Beef up there; I just want that sign for my desk.

• I received something really cool in the mail yesterday — Dustin Harbin had been kind enough to offer a review copy of his Diary Comics Volume 1 (making its debut this weekend at SPX) and I was more than happy to accept his kind offer. But imagine my surprise when I found that the package also contained a copy of Three Word Phrase mini by Ryan Pequin (also making its debut at SPX). That’s a whole 100% more review copies that I was expecting!

  I’m still working through DCV1 (it contains comics for every day from 1 January to 30 June 2010, in many cases getting down to the hourly scale of time), but I can tell you this much — as Pekarian as his daily diary comic is online, it approaches something like poetry when you’ve got between a day and a week staring up from a two-page spread. Time moves quicker and slower depending on how much Harbin wants to get into, and all you can do is follow the tempo changes, nodding your head as he improvises the rhythm.

  On the off chance you don’t find that worth the price of admission (a paltry six dollars for six months of the man’s life!), then consider that he drew a couple zillion Dharbin heads for the inside front cover, and pigment choices, there’s a feeling of looking at a 3-D image without the green and red glasses; your brain is sure that there are dimensions that you can’t quite perceive and it wants to dig in further.

  Ryan Pequin’s mini contains roughly half of the comics that he’s posted online, and needs only two words to convince you it is the best thing ever: President Bird.

• In other news, David Willis celebrates thirteen years of webcomics (across four related, exclamatory titles) by launching a fifth. The worst-kept secret of the past month, Dumbing of Age, is a relaunch/reinterpretation/reboot of Roomies! (which started the whole shebang lo those many years ago). Think of it as having the same relationship to the Walkyverse as the new Star Trek has to the previous iterations of the United Federation of Planets.
• Confidential to everybody going to SPX/Intervention this weekend: You lucky bastards.

Nothing like a Monday off, except when there’s a mountain of news that piles up over the weekend.

• From PAX came the news that there’s going to be a new webcomic in town, and much like the 1960s when the news could break that talented musicians from different groups were coming together to form a supergroup, this one is coming from established stars of the medium, viz., Messers Holkins, Krahulik, and Kurtz.

  Not much known right now beyond the name and basic concept: The Trenches will focus on a group of videogame testers, and the one teaser image released so far visually sits exactly in the middle of Kurtz & Krahulik’s artistic stylings. For me, the most intriguing part of it all is the name, because when I hear about The Trench(es), my mind goes back to another group of three young guys (as they were then) who set their minds to challenges and made things happen. I’ll let Jerry, Mike, and Scott argue who is FIDO, who is GUIDO, and who is RETRO, since they’re all equally cool (which is to say, nearly as cool as EECOM).

• Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Phil & Kaja Foglio (indeed, all of Studio Foglio) received the news that Girl Genius Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm was the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. One may note Studio Foglio, having won this particular award twice in its two years of existence, are a supergroup in their own right.

  One might also note that although Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary: The Longshorman of the Apocalypse didn’t win, by all accounts he enjoyed a lovely trip to Melbourne in conjunction with the nomination. Congrats to Tayler, the Foglios, and Girl Genius colorist Cheynne Wright.

• Okay, calling it now — as of today, Intervention is not allowed to drop any more last-minute news. Today came the announcement that the new con and its spacial/temporal neighbor SPX will be cross-promoting each other, with the shows giving out weekend passes to encourage attendees to take in both events.
• Anniversaries: The wholly mysterious Eben07 turns three years old today (intercepted satcom intelligence image here), Funny Webcomic hit 500 strips yesterday, and Kevin & Kell hit a literally unprecedented fifteen years last Friday. Yikes.

Ready? Go!

• Radness Queen of the Greater Bay Area Shaenon Garrity will be part of a massive sketch-a-thon at the Schulz Museum next Saturday, 11 Sept, in honor of 60 years of Peanuts. Head up to Northern California to join in on the fun; if you can’t make it, at least enjoy her new interview over at Dimes For Nickels, where she talks about her work with William George, creator of (among other things) the greatly missed Bang Barstal.
• Whoa, it’s Dragon*Con again, and I know that there are webcomickers there, but the page they’re most likely to be listed on is kind of … no easily searchable. What I do know is that despite not being listed, Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson are in the Artist Alley in the Hyatt.

  Also, if you’re interested in perversity of the highest order without interference by authority figures, Jennie Breeden got herself a room after the police took an interest in last year’s public kilt+leafblower spectacle. Hanover ballrooms C-E [PDF] at the very early hour of 1:00am Saturday and Sunday (or a somewhat late hour Friday and Saturday, if you prefer).

• There were some interesting … I’ll call them hate–tweets … sent to Andy Bell over the course of the last wave of Android releases. For those that haven’t been able to purchase them, good news: two of the Series 01 designs (basic green and blank) are leaving behind the limited edition world for the exciting future of we’ll make as many as you people want to buy, stop with the death threats already. On top of that, a brand-new Series 02 will be joining them in wholesale quantities, starting from Q1 next year.

  While I will relish not having to obsessively hit F5 on my browser during the purchase windows beset with rapacious competitors, I am equally dismayed that there will now be an entire additional series of designs that I will be compelled to purchase in blind boxes. It’s a sickness, and Andy Bell is the one that gave it to me. Drat him and his incredible talents!

So again, short items. Probably could have worked through lunch, but when fate gives you an opportunity to eat with Rick Marshall, you gotta grab that brass ring with both hands.

• Most significantly, US Immigration & Customs Enforcement have decided that they like webcomics after all. On the one hand, Dave McElfatrick of Cyanide & Happiness has, after great headache, heartache, and random other organache, obtained permission to come to the US to work with his partners. I was able to see some of the effort that Dave’s fellow C&H creators went to in order to help McElfatrick after his earlier denial by ICE, and believe me that it was tremendous. On the other hand, Kate Beaton has likewise been admitted to the US, and has taken up residence in the teeming metropolis of Brooklyn for the next little while. Everybody feel good for Kate and Dave.
• The PuppyCow plush (as envisioned by Jamie Noguchi and described here as oogy) has hit its funding goal. The highly slightly somewhat disturbing plush collectible will now be going to production.
• Intervention hit the front page of Wired this morning, with a nicely positive piece in the Geek Dad blog; the description of Intervention as being A con that talks about web comics and how to create them. might be a bit too narrow, though. Organizers Onezumi Hartstein & James Harknell have pushed really hard to make Intervention incorporate webcomics, but also be more broadly about all kinds of creativity via the pipeline of the intertubes. Still, lotta notice for what’s still an incoming-freshman con; if the show lives up to all the expectations I’ve seen flying around, it could be mid-sized (4000 – 8000) in just a couple of years.
• All and sundry heading to PAX: safe travels, and remember that you people traditionally are the incubator for the most infectious disease vectors known to health science. If you don’t want to see stuff oozing out of you that really should remain in, wash your hands enthusiastically and often.

Brian “Box” Brown (or Trip-B as he was known in his brief, but well-regarded, gangsta rap career) has released a new webcomic yea upon the internets, Everything Dies. A continuation of/supplement to his print comics of the same name (note to self: must buy issue #3, and #4 is due out soon), Everything Dies concerns itself primarily with The Big Questions of Life, Death, Religion, Faith, ans Suchlike.

On launch day alone, Brown has three stories (each more than 10 pages long) on mortality (i.e.: how he wants his funeral to go), public exhibitions of religious fervor (i.e.: an incomplete Jesus-themed theme park in Arkansas), and the (non-)existence of God (i.e.: what would constitute definitive proof of such).

And, in case a bigger justification for the title of Everything Dies were needed, Brown today wraps up his long-running series, Bellen!, the only way possible: a final declaration of identity and purpose.

• Con season still has a few last hurrahs before it wraps for the year, and two of them are coming up quickly: Intervention and SPX kick off in just over 10 days, and programming info is now available. Intervention’s got more than 75 panels, plus gaming and separate-registration-required workshops, covering a lot of ground.

  If you were, as I was, perhaps a little surprised to see multiple sessions that amount to Gettin’ Laid (Dating Advice from Hot Geeky Chicks, Sex Farm: A D00DZ Guide to Getting Chicks Through Nerdy Enterprise), well, there are plenty to balance it out on the more serious side (Act Locally, Promote Globally: A Conversation with Molly Crabapple, Copyrights for Artists, The Economies of Small Scale, and Revenue Streams: How to Make Ten-Tenths of a Living look particularly promising). Descriptions here, schedules here.

  By contrast, SPX has never been heavy on the programming, preferring to give attendees plenty of time to schmooze and talk with creators (and minimize the chance that you’ll have to decided between panels). You’ve got something kicking off pretty much every half hour, staggered between two rooms (Brookside Conference Room at the top of the hour, and White Flint Ampitheatre at the bottom), with pretty much a laser-like focus on indy comics and their creators.

  Particularly good-looking descriptions include Comics and Worldbuilding (panelists include Evan Dahm, Liz Baillie, Aaron Diaz, Carla Speed McNeil, and Spike Trotman), Telling Stories (with Heidi MacDonald, Meredith Gran, Roger Langridge, and Jon Lewis), and Kate Beaton and Julia Wertz in Conversation (with special guest Dustin Harbin). Descriptions, times, and locations here.

Quick bits:

• Reality TV meets vampires meets furries meets cyberpunk meets book one of The Last Res0rt.
• New twist on the superhero tropes: with mondo-powered beings flying around every damn way, somebody’s going to have to handle the PR and marketing, and that’s where The Hero Business comes in. Of course, who is more evil and venal? The nominal villains, or the skeezy marketing types working for the heroes? Episode 1 done, episode 2 coming soon.
• Launching tomorrow: the all-new home of In Maps & Legends, which had been running on Zuda when Zuda closed up shop.

Got a link in the mail to the preview of an e-book by DJ Coffman. This isn’t a review, since I a) don’t have the entire book in front of me; b) wouldn’t have had to time read it properly since it launched yesterday, and c) it’s not even remotely aimed at me. Ca$h for Cartoonists is bright, colorful, has a busy, eye-grabbing (almost advertising-like … and if there’s one thing ad guys knows, it’s how to hold eyeballs) design, and (as befits an e-book) up-to-the-second. For instance, you can get a discount on website hosting with a code provided in the introductory section, something that would be all but impossible with a traditional ink-and-paper presentation.

The chapters are pretty specific (“Spot Illustration”, “Digital Caricatures”, and “ACEO (Art Cards)” are the first three), and are presented in a detailed, relentlessly upbeat tone. There’s not enough in the preview to see if any of the full book ramps back a bit from the enthusiasm (Here’s how you can do this!) to something perhaps a bit more realistic (Here’s how I did this, you should be able to make it work similarly, but keep in mind that it’s a different economic climate and your mileages of persistence, luck, and talent will vary.), which I hope does happen.

All those copies of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (or more recently, all the How to Draw Manga books) led to an awful lot of starry-eyed kids who were certain that success was imminent; some lost interest or found other dreams, some wound up bitter, and they didn’t have an easily identifiable and accessible author to blame their lack of success on. Here’s the risky bit for Coffman:

A VERY SPECIAL OFFER! For a limited time when you buy the full edition of my ebook, I’m going to make myself available to you for the ?rst 30 days as a Personal Cartooning Career Coach… or Comic Coach… or, well I really don’t have a fancy title for this service, but if you draw comics or cartoons and want to personally pick my brain, or if you’re feeling stuck and need inspired… this is the deal for you!

Why be coached by me? I’ve done just about everything you can do in the cartooning business, from newspaper syndication to full blown super hero comics with a big hollywood producer. Not only have I had a ton of success with my skills, but I’ve also failed many times and made mistakes along the way which I learned from and can pass a lot of knowledge on to you.

ONE MORE THING… You’ll have a chance to get on the AWESOME LIST. What is it? A special email newsletter for buyers of the full edition only, which basically assures this book will never end! I’ll send you updated ways to earn more money with your cartoons and illustrations as they become available. [emphasis original]

I hope that those starry-eyed kids don’t take Coffman’s enthusiasm for a promise, and really hope they don’t read over the most important part of that quote:

I’ve also failed many times and made mistakes along the way

Let’s cut that down one more time for those in the back:

I’ve also failed many times

No book will keep you from having your own failures, starry-eyed kids! Keep that very important bit of perspective in mind while you peruse the lessons! $47 to download, going up to $97 after September 30.

• Speaking of $47, if you had that much to spend but don’t want Coffman’s book, you could get the 2-day VIP package for NEWW 2 and have $2 left over to buy a refreshing beverage. Plain ol’ non-VIP passes are $10, and one-day passes $6, for those that can live without the special-edition NEWW2 Sharpie (not sure I can).
• Speaking of books, Chris Eliopolous pulled a fast one on me with this morning’s tweet:
  

  The book. http://www.miserylovessherman.com/2010/08/26/the-book/

  I can’t be the only one that got his hopes up that this would be another Misery Loves Sherman collection, can I?

It started off so innocently, with an unsolicited tweet from Jon Rosenberg:

@fleenguy when you read tomorrow’s SFAM, you may have a question. The answer to that question is “Yes”.

Which naturally left me wondering what the question should be; top contender when I went to bed was, Will you buy me a case of hard liquor and a cupcake for my birthday? Then this morning, the full impact of what Rosenberg meant became apparent: I am Gary!

With those three words, the question obviously became, So Jon, is this a naked attempt to get me to pimp your new reader-participation voting rules for Scenes From A Multiverse, debuting tomorrow (Thursday 26 Aug 2010, that is), in the hopes that my little seemingly-genderless cosmic-unicorn-destroying avatar will finally displace the hated Sciencemaster Adler from his throne?

So, yeah. Everybody be sure to vote for “Gary” in the next poll. And damn you for your manipulative ways, Rosenberg. I shake my fist at you in impotent rage, thusly!

• In other, less me-abusing news, ’tis the season for webcomickers to travel o’er the oceans wide, landing in the far antipodes. Cases in point: Howard Tayler, who leaves for Melbourne on Saturday, and is doing a meet & greet to celebrate; also, Kaja & Phil Foglio, who are already in Fair Oz and did a signing in Sydney, and will be kicking around various corners of the continent for the next ten days-two weeks. Could it be a coincidence that Foglio & Foglio and Tayler are Down Under in the same time frame as the 68th World Science Fiction Convention (this year in the form of AussieCon4), where they are nominees for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story? Could be, rabbit. Could be.
• Speaking of conventions, Baltimore Comic-Con hits this weekend in Charm City, with the Harvey Awards again containing a category for Best On-Line Comics Work, with mostly the usual suspects nominated. Special props to Scott Kurtz who will again be hosting the awards (and who killed last year), and who is openly campaigning for votes this year (which, let’s face it, everybody does). If Kurtz doesn’t win, I’m imagining a scene like that at the Emmy Awards almost 30 years ago when Eddie Murphy had to announce that he lost in his category, looked straight into the camera and deadpanned, They told me if I hosted, I was gonna win.
• Lastly, Where the Typos Og heads off into the sunset before wearing out its welcome; Sylvan Migdal’s various projects always go out when at their creative peak, so that’s good. For those more interested in the creator than the specific project, Migdal’s new series starts 6 October at his website.

There are so many webcomics that don’t get mentioned here very much — naturally, as I am only one guy, I can’t keep up with everything that’s created. In a few cases, though, there’s comics that I read and just don’t think to write about, since I tend to focus on the new, novel, and unusually good updates — and some strips just operate at a high level of consistent quality and not have unusually good updates that stand out from the rest (coincidentally, these tend to be strips that cartoonists regard as favorites). Thus, an unforgiveable paucity of mentions of strips like Three Word Phrase, Cat Rackham, and others.

When these consistent high-performers do sink into my thick skull, it tends to be because they’re wrapping up, like the recently-concluded Order of Tales, the about to conclude Bellen!, and today’s conclusion to Ellerbisms. There’s no flash, no fire, no big AND THEN, A NATION BONDED THROUGH THE POWER OF LAUGHTER here — it’s just another day for Marc and Anna, one with some highs and lows, some stupidity and forgiveness, and all the stupidity and grace that tells you this is how life actually happens. Marc Ellerby will continue to make comics (Chloe Noonan looks amazing), and the really good comics will continue to be really good whether my satisfaction at reading them makes enough of an impression to write about them or not.

• In other news, progress on NEWW 2 proceed apace, with lots of news likely to break rapidly in the coming weeks. Intervention continues to rack up sponsors and guests o’ plenty, and seems set to make a major splash for a first-year con. Hotel block deals are up in the next week, and remember — you can drift between Intervention and SPX, which is literally 2 km down the street.
• Big Round Number Alert: 300 strips at EROS INC, which despite the name is not an adult-oriented affair; it’s about a nice Jewish girl that finds herself working for an eternally-old agency that matches people up (she got recruited because the little cupid guys they used to use are lazy buggers).
• Not exactly webcomics, but what the heck: Girls Drawin’ Girls sends some of its crew on the road to the Cartoon Art Museum‘s bookstore next Saturday from 2:00 to 5:00pm. Visitors will be able to watch the artists at work and look through previously produced pinup projects. The press release doesn’t explicitly say so, but I’d wager if you wandered over, you’d get to talk shop with the Girls (draw-ers) and possibly the Girls (draw-ees).