WordPress’s spam filters held a Bill Barnes infocomment for moderation, and passed along two posts hawking bogus Sony Viao batteries. Bad algorithms, or does it know something we don’t?

In any event, we can update yesterday’s SDCC Webcomics Locate-o-Matic as follows:

Booth 1228 — Evil, Inc and Friends
Booth 1229 — Keenspot
Booth 1231 — TopatoCo
Booth 1234 — Tiny Kitten Teeth
Booth 1237 — Penny Arcade
Booth 1330 — Blank Label
Booth 1337 — Dumbrella
Booth 2300 — Unshelved

As this list grows, we’ll just keep including it at the bottom of posts so that it doesn’t get in the way.

• Latest Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf Coast total: $1888.02, with most of the swing in just one or two items. Come on, people, there’s some real bargains still out there. NB: the Thursday tranche of offerings has not yet gone up.
• From the Webcomics Past department, Padraic Harley wrote:
  

  I was wondering if you folks know whatever happened to Matt Milby and his Malfunction Junction webcomic? It disappeared aaaages ago and myself and my friends still get pangs of missing it.

  Milby did some pretty good work and contributed a fair number of guest comics around 2006 – 2007 before completely dropping out of sight about two years ago. If anybody knows of Milby’s whereabouts, let him know that at least one fan is curious.

• Speaking of past webcomics experiences, I remember archive trawling my way through Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic a couple years ago; something about beholder home life made me chuckle, and you can never have too many beholders.

  Somewhere around strip 200 I had to go do something else and never got back to it. I noticed ’em at Archive Binge realized that the only way for YAFGC to be at 1502 updates would be to update pretty much without fail every day since. That was worth a trip over to the site, where I was pleased to see that the art has gotten sharper and more ambitious, the story arcs regularly run for hundreds of strips, and there’s now a book out.

  Volume One: The First Year covers exactly that — 366 comics by Rich Morris, who I now realize was the guy that did the ultimate in nerd-tastic tribute comicking, a 257-page Doctor Who epic that included all ten Doctors (as they were at the time) and every companion (again, as of the time of writing). Oh, and about a zillion other pages of comics, too.

  Given the sheer volume of comics (in different genres) that Morris is cranking out, a bit of sketchy, pencil-y work is entirely understandable (actually, it looks a bit like animation pencil tests, and the faces especially have a slightly exaggerated, animation feel to them, which is doubly understandable given that Morris lists his day job as storyboard artist). If fantasy gaming and Doctor Who aren’t your thing, there’s surely something here that will appeal to you. Check ’em out, and try not to spend more than five or six hours at a time crawling through back strips — it’s bad for your posture.

My faithful hound, even now, is sprawled across the A/C vent, hogging all the cold air for herself. Let’s think of other places with more temperate weather.

• For example, the Gulf Coast, which surely can’t be this unpleasant, the roiling waves of petrodeath aside. We’re into day three of the Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf Coast, and as of this writing the various auctions have reached a total of $1654.51, with several heavy hitters still to be listed, and 12 days to go before it all wraps up.
• One of those aforementioned heavy hitters? Brandon Bird. He’s part of a Law & Order-themed art show coming up at the end of the month (it largely coincides with San Diego Comic Con) called These Are Their Stories at Gallery Meltdown in LA, 24 – 30 July. I saw “part of”, in the sense that Bird is well known for this L&O themed work, and he’s pretty much the driving force behind this show and is contributing three of the nearly 50 pieces. Also part of TATS: Kate Beaton, Box Brown, Scott C, Carly Monardo, and Christopher Hastings.
• Speaking of Scott C and LA, his Great Showdowns artblog will be releasing a new print set of great showdowns via Galleries 1988; this will be in conjunction with G1988’s annual Crazy 4 Cult show, which starts Friday. Not only will Scott C prints be available, but ten originals of the showdowns will also be up for grabs.
• Speaking of San Diego (we were, couple items back), the first webcomics map for this year has dropped; one might be forgiven for thinking that webcomics at SDCC ’10 were all-Guigar all the time, but I’m sure we can fill in a few more of the numbers. Unfortunately, although the SDCC Exhibitor list is current as of today, it doesn’t yet feature booth numbers.

  Traditionally, space 1237 has been taken by Penny Arcade, 1330 by Blank Label and 1229 by Keenspot (which should make for an interesting neighborhood). 1231 was previously the Dayfree table, since acquired by TopatoCo, and 1337 (island, not shown) is where you can find Dumbrella. If you know of any other booth assignments with certainty, chime in.

I’m celebrating the end of both Order of Tales (two chapters, consisting of 81 full pages) and The Anime Club (part 5, 22 images, each with upwards of a dozen panels) with comprehensive re-readings of both epics.

Carly Monardo’s Web-Comics Auction for the Gulf Coast has gone live, with the first batch of six offerings now biddable. Each day until Friday, another five to seven pieces will go up, with the auctions running for ten days. Prices start at $5.00 (US) plus shipping, and people seem not to have noticed the auction is live yet, because there’s a Becky Dreistadt original gouache painting that’s presently going for six bucks. That won’t last long, but still — incredible bargains to be had in service to a good cause. By the end of the week, there will be 28 different auctions to browse, so scrape up all the spare cash you can and good luck to all the bidders.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about a thousand pages of webcomics to re-read.

Let’s get this thing done — I gots grillin’ to do this weekend.

• Something I saw on Twitter last night that you might have missed:
  

  oops, I missed a few months when I transferred to the new site. I hit 3k two comics ago. Ah well, I’ll do a big strip for the 4,000th toon.

  Which, if my count is correct, would make this the 3000th update of The Devil’s Panties, complete with color. The list of webcomics long runners at the 3000 threshold appears to now number 12, and in a few weeks will hit 13. Well done Jennie Breeden, and (in three weeks) Dave Kellett.

• We’ve mentioned a number of the Meredith Gran Octotour dates here, and we’ve missed mentioning a few. What looks to be one of the larger signings will kick off on Tuesday, 7 July at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn. The fun starts at 7:00pm, and Gran will be joined by R Stevens, Jon Rosenberg, and Chris Hastings signing their own offerings, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other webcomics luminaries drop in to say howdy. This is my local stop on Gran’s tour, and dammit, I can’t make it. Tuesday is EMS night, and if we get no calls I am gonna be pissed. Hear that, citizens? Get seriously sick and/or injured to justify my absence from this event.
• Blast from the past: it’s got to be five years now since Scotty Arsenault’s Commander Kitty went on a temporary hiatus that became pretty permanent. Yesterday I got an email from Arsenault informing me that the hiatus was over, and CK is back. There was a lot of goofy fun in those strips way back when, and the reboot seems to be just as enjoyable. Whether you ever read about the intrepid spacefaring felines before or not, take a moment to check out the all-new Commander Kitty.

It’s absolutely gorgeous out, why am I at work? Wherever you are, take a peek outside and if it’s nice, close out the browser and go enjoy it for a half hour or so. I’ll still be here.

• Following up on the previously-reported screening of Sita Sings The Blues sponsored by our friends at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francicso, some additional information. As previously announced, the movie screens on Tuesday, 20 July (aka the day before Preview Night in San Diego); now we can share that the screening will be at 7pm (doors open at 6:30) at the Delancey Street Foundation Screening Room, located at 600 The Embarcadero; tickets are $25 in advance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, $30 at the door. Tell Nina I said hi.
• The first ever “Feel Free To Say Hi If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, Woooooo!” apparently had some success, so Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (Canadian edition) Ryan North is declaring a second such day, this time with a bit more lead time and on the weekend so more people can find romance. Saturday, July 17th will be what is now officially named the annual “July Dinosaur Comics Check Out My Sweet Shirt, And Then Talk To Me Because I’m Awesome Day”.
• Another webcomic has crossed the decade mark; Darrell M. Stark wrote to remind us that today, June 30th, makes ten years of Breakpoint City by Brian Emling. I think you can count the number of webcomics that have managed such on two hands and zero feet, so well done Brian, and thanks for the reminder, Darrell.
• Not quite anniversaries, but two epic stories will be wrapping up next week: on Monday, 5 July Evan Dahm will be finishing Order of Tales with an update of 60-odd pages. Add it to the previously-completed Rice Boy, and Dahm has a couple zillion pages of affecting, weird, compelling story for you to enjoy.

  To make the day extra special, KC Green will on the same day post the final chapter of The Anime Club. For those of you that find Monday to be a holiday, you should find plenty of free time to read both sagas over in their entirety.

• Finally, nothing to do with webcomics, but I wanted to share this: from the TEDx conference held in Princeton earlier this year, the guys who provide me with drinks: Francis Schott and Mark Pascal on the value of old style social networks. Anybody passing through central New Jersey, I am always available to have a drink with you at their bars.

Chris Hastings art decorates Boy Scout shoulder patches. I will go so far to say that in the entire, century-long history of the Scouting movement, this is the first time that any one of a ninja/doctor, 12 year old bandito sidekick, raptor, gorilla, or explosion (!) have appeared on a council patch, much less all of them together. Hey, Chris, if you want to bring some of those to San Diego, I got some traders of my old council patches. They have, um, Thomas Edison on them?

In other news …

• David Malki ! cuts straight to the heart of engineering. I can see this going up on a lot of nerd school dorm room doors.
• Why is it always France that gives Andy Bell the chance to work large? Photos of his contributions to the Nouveaux Monstres show in a retrofitted submarine base in Saint-Nazaire, for your enjoyment.
• For those that caught the announcement of musical guests at Pax Prime that dropped last week, a correction. Your Labor Day weekend will include Anamanaguchi, Jonathan Coulton, Metroid Metal, The Minibosses, Paul and Storm, and The Protomen as previously announced, but somehow MC Frontalot was left off the list. Please adjust your expectations accordingly.
• Finally, a really nice overview of tablet PCs for artists by John Allison. I can’t recall seeing something this comprehensive before, so all those that want Cintiqish behavior in a portable form factor, give this a good read.

My wife’s back from a trip, so mine started looking up considerably when I picked her up at EWR.

• If you haven’t donated art to Carly Monardo’s Webcomics Auction for the Gulf Coast, I’d say you’re probably out of luck unless you get it to FedEx today. Deadline for submissions to be in Carly’s hands is day after tomorrow, but if you can manage it, you’ll be in some pretty impressive company — twenty-six creators by my count, including names like Beaton, Dreistadt, and Foglio. The bidding kicks off next Monday, 5 July.
• The more I read by Darryl Cunningham, the more I’m convinced I need to buy him a beer; he did the stellar bit of investigative cartooning (that is, representing the work of investigative journalists in cartoon form) on the history of the vicious lie linking autism and childhood vaccination.

  Cunningham is back with another blow for rationality, in the form of a 19 page strip on homeopathy, and how buying into its promise requires a complete rejection of evidence-based … I was going to say “medicine”, and then “science”, but really, the only appropriate word is “reality”. It’s a good ‘un.

• A couple of days ago, I read a plaintive tweet that worried that Nice Pete was “going to do the murders to Téodor” (can’t find it right now; add a comment if you know who wrote it), and given recent events, it was hard to dispute that such might be Nice Pete’s dark intent. Then again, an earlier creepy ride in Nice Pete’s murder van actually arrived at a super-secret ice cream shop, so maybe things aren’t so bad?

  But just how bad things could get wasn’t revealed until today — I can’t tell if Nice Pete is hallucinating the whole thing, or if he really is a thrall of his own shadow. Does this make him more or less of a sociopath? Regardless how much he and I may agree on the subject of Rachel Ray, I must say that he is lately proving himself not very Nice at all.

• Notability, ho. Friend o’ Fleen (and good-natured recipient of my Land of the Lost jokes) Rick Marshall took some time out from wrangling comics news at MTV’s Splash Page to guest-write the pop culture blog over at USA Today; lots of love for the webcomics packed into his column, including an inexplicable mention of your humble hack webcomics pseudo-journalist in the company of some giants of the medium (and he spelled my name correctly, which nobody ever does. He hearts me!).

It occurs to me that a running list of my titles here at Fleen would actually constitute a pretty accurate (if brief) day-to-day history of life in my early 40s. That’s a sobering thought, which I suppose means I can go drink to make up for the soberification (shut up, it is too a word).

• Neglected to mention yesterday that Ursula Vernon’s Digger is now up to book 5, which those of you at Anthrocon can buy starting about … now? I haven’t found any info about where/when the rest of us will be able to purchase it, but I will be certain to share with you once I know. Also revealed on that page is the fact that we’re barrelling towards the story’s conclusion; I had known that Digger was due to wrap this year, but seeing that we’re in the actual endgame — glad to see how it will all wrap up, sorry that it’ll be done.
• Got some Intervention news for y’all today. As far back as February (when the internet culture show was first announced), it was known that some of the programming tracks would be hands-on; in particular, there would be sessions devoted to content management systems and their installation/configuration. Today, that particular track got a little more interesting:
  

  Big announcement for webcomic artists, WordPress users, and web developers: we’ve just signed up the lead programming developer for ComicPress, Frumph, to appear at Intervention and host panels and hands-on workshops for CSS, WordPress, and ComicPress set up and tweaking.

  [T]his is your opportunity to talk with and get one-on-one advice and tips directly from the developer about set up and upgrading. We will be announcing details on how you can register for the hands-on workshops in the next few days, along with the costs for these extra limited events. Frumph will also be on some open panels, so anyone can stop in and ask general questions as well.

  This is especially interesting, given that Frumph (or Phil Hofer, as his mom calls him) announced what essentially amounts to his retirement from the office of unpaid ComicPress frontman some two months back. Hofer probably knows ComicPress as well as anybody on the planet, and the opportunity to pick his brains about CP is a pretty significant thing for those trying to really tune up their websites. As such, please note the bits in the announcement about “limited events” and “costs” — there’s going to be a surcharge, but in exchange for it you’ll be in a small group setting.

A number of things previously mentioned get revisted today; feel free to review the appropriate antecedents.

• TCAF this year was, by all accounts, a smashing success, and coming only one year after the previous bi-annual iterations, it was a bonus smashing success. Now the official recap is up, and the decision has been made — the one year interval experiment was concluded satisfactorily, and “for the forseeable future”, TCAF will be an annual event. Well done festival director and co-founder Christopher Butcher, with an extra set of thanks to the show’s many dedicated volunteers.
• Flight remains the definitive comics anthology series in the modern era; founded by small-press and webcomics creators, run by Kazu Kibuishi and Kean Soo, it’s always been of the highest quality and featured the prettiest pictures. The news that the eighth volume of Flight would be the last was bitter, but things can’t go on forever. The penultimate volume (that’s fancy words for “number seven”) now has previews available for your perusal in advance of its release at San Diego Comic Con.
• One may recall a discussion on ideas posited a while back by Olaf Moriarty Solstrand, with the basic thesis that ideas come all the time — it’s the ability (or drive) to execute on them that matters. To underscore the point, Solstrand took the opportunity to come up with 100 comics ideas in 100 days. You know where this is going; from Solstrand yesterday:
  

  [J]ust a quick update — the “100 ideas in 100 days” project over at olafsolstrand.no I tipped you about three months ago is now over. Today is day 100, and idea #100 was published half an hour ago.

  The quality varies, but I had expected that — and I managed to complete the project before the set deadline, so in my book this qualifies as a success.

  Solstrand is being modest — pretty much any of the ideas he’s presented (to you! for free!) could be used to build a pretty extensive story on. Let this now be the definite point where the Where do you get your ideas from? question is officially retired. You make ’em up, and if you’re not thrilled with it, you make up another. But how do I come up with them in the first place? You’ve got your answer, next question. But Next!

• Finally, a followup on a small drama of love that played out in the pages of Dinosaur Comics. Girl meets Boy on the Tube because of DC shirts, falls madly in interested, but neglects to get his name. Girl is leaving London in two weeks. Girl writes to Ryan North for assistance. Ryan publishes Girl’s story, and gets results. Boy has a girlfriend already, but at least Girl doesn’t have to wonder what might have been. Ryan wonders — even though this pairing that he facilitated didn’t work out, how else might he spread the love?

  Answer: Tomorrow, Friday, is the first ever “Feel Free To Say Hi If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day, Woooooo!” [emphasis original]:

  If you’re single and you’d like to meet someone who maybe reads the same comic as you, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. If you’ve got one of my shirts, wear it, and if you don’t have one, you can keep an eye out for someone who does! And if something awesome does happen, please email me about it: it’d be totally amazing if everything works out.

  Okay, so the problem is – what if you’re happily in a monogamous relationship or if you’re NOT looking for anyone or whatever? You can not wear your shirt tomorrow, or if you do, you can politely let folks down easy as I’m sure you’re used to doing, and I say this because every reader of my comic I’ve ever met is attractive. Not even a joke there. It’s kinda crazy. [emphasis original]

  So there you go — choose your wardrobe tomorrow carefully, and go out and make some friends!

If everybody’s done Scott Pilgrimizing themselves, I have a few items that you may be interested in.

• In addition to Bryan Lee O’Malley conquering the world of cinematic entertainment, there’s another comicky big-screen entertainment due in a week or so, and this one also has some webcomics connections. Your friend and mine, Dave Roman, was pretty intimately involved with Avatar during his stint with Nickelodeon and their self-named (and now sadly defunct) magazine.

  As such, Roman was a perfect choice to co-script (although not draw — he’s a busy guy) the movie adaptation manga/graphic novel/whatever you want to call it. It released yesterday, and Dave (with co-writer Alison Wilgus and artist Joon Choi) will be doing a small tour in the Greater New York City mediasphere.

  Weirdly, a couple of these appearances will be at Nordstrom stores in northern New Jersey — and Nordstrom doesn’t carry books, much less comics. But there will also be an appearance at Kinokuniya in Manhattan, which makes more sense and happens to be around the corner from my place of employment. The mall part of the tour takes place this weekend, and the Kinokuniya part on Friday, 2 July.

• Due out today, Girl Genius Vol 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, covering comics from January 2009 to last December. Shockingly, going through my own notes, I appear to have neglected to pre-order this one, and so must render Professors Foglio and Foglio their due with a purchase this afternoon; equally shocking, I appear to have missed ordering some other books that I should have, which means they won’t be showing up in my mailbox anytime soon, and I’ll be handing some cash money to some creators in San Diego.
• Non-book related: the gang over at Snowflakes (still your best choice for wedgies, swirlies, CPR, and other Viking-related violence perpetrated by children, upon children) are running a contest. Simply print off one (or both) of two promo posters and place it someplace prominent (hint: Midtown Manhattan is covered with construction barriers with completely ineffectual POST NO BILLS warnings) and submit photo proof of your efforts. Best two entries (in the opinion of the judges) will win the original art from the posters and a signed color print.