Let’s see, you had the usual reprobates hanging around a hotel ballroom in the Jersey burbs this weekend, news of a new signing, books and reviews, and some news you can use. Let’s take ’em one at a time.

• The inaugural Wild Pig Con took place Saturday and Sunday in Springfield, NJ, in a hotel featuring an in-lobby Mexican place with $4.00 margaritas (yay) that didn’t open until 5:00pm (boo). At any random time you might have heard Randy Milholland being told that he was responsible for con-goers getting married, seen David Willis molesting Danielle Corsetto‘s booth decoration, observed Ross Nover hosting Super Art Fight! (to an audience chock–full of webcomickers), or watched old Spider-Man reruns. Not a bad use of five bucks, honestly.
• Emergency last-minute signing! Seattle fans of Kellett, Kurtz, and Straub (which, weirdly, is not the name of a white-shoe law firm) should make their way over to The Comic Stop in Lynnwood round about dinnertime. Tell ’em I said Hey.
• News broke over the weekend of a review in the New York Times of Raina Telgemeier‘s SMILE, and just as importantly, the USPS finally delivered my copy of Erika Moen‘s DAR! A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary Volume Two. In case I hadn’t talked enough about either book/webcomic previously, they’re both as good as I can possibly express.

  For two works so very different in tone (for the life of me, I cannot imagine Raina ever producing work that isn’t all-ages friendly, whereas Moen had jerky employees at a printing plant refuse to work on her book because of its adult content), they have something in common — an honest, clear-eyed look at the lives of the authors as they try to figure out who they are. Plus, one of them has enormous sex toys and mystery poop.

• I’m assuming that by this time next week you’ll be able to go into any random Pearl art supply store, wave your hand and casually remark I’m a Webcomics Dot Com subscriber, and they’ll load you up with everything you need for a $5 co-pay. Okay, maybe not quite that far, but a nearly 40% discount on retracto-standing banners? If you were going to buy one of these guys anyway, taking out a membership at WDC means you’ll end up $50 ahead by the time it’s all said and done.

  Enjoy your purchase and savings in good conscience, as I’m sure Brad Guigar totally isn’t neglecting his family with all the time he must spend arranging these deals — if you hear his kids humming Harry Chapin songs, I’m sure that’s completely a coincidence.

I can’t believe that Brad Guigar, of all people, didn’t get Uncle Ben’s famous dictum right. It has to be a transcription error or something. Oh, right, you’re wondering what I’m talking about. As part of the general trend in comics reporting in mainstream places slowly drifting away from BIFF! POW!, there’s also a trend of articles along the lines of Look! People making comics on the web! Thus, AOL’s small business/entrepreneurs portal talking about webcomics as sustainable income source, with quotes from Matthew Inman, Chris Onstad and the aforementioned Guigar:

Guigar also suggests taking a course in small business operations. “It’s a double-edged sword: Webcomics comes with incredible freedom, but with that freedom comes incredible responsibility. To enjoy the freedom of being a self-published creator, you have to take the responsibility of being a good businessperson.”

• TCAF was, by all accounts, amazingly fun, and the Doug Wright Awards were given out Saturday night — Our Kate didn’t win the Pigskin Peters Award for which she was nominated, but you know who else didn’t win? Doug Wright. I always figured if the awards were named after you, you’d automatically win, but apparently not. This should give you some idea of the level of competition, and Fleen congratulates Marc Bell for the win.

  This weekend, some of the Toronto survivors will be making their way to deepest, remotest New Jersey for Wild Pig Con; it’s like five bucks to get in and check out the attendance list. Me, I’m going to see how insane Randy Milhollland is from all of his cross-country driving.

• Finally, not exactly webcomics, but … well, you’ll see:
  

  The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s own museum dedicated to the cartoon arts, is proud to announce the June release of Illustration Ale, its collaboration with East End Brewing Company (“Pittsburgh’s micro-est microbrewery”).

  Illustration Ale is a limited edition, 700-bottle run of a one-time East End brew. The ale is a bottle-conditioned, with a rich dark malt character, spicy and nuanced, without any actual spices added. The complex flavors result from the brewer’s careful handling of a special Farmhouse Ale yeast.

  Each one-liter swing-top bottle bears a label created by one of six Pittsburgh cartoonists, making for a unique six-pack collection. The custom labels were designed by David Coulson, Dave Klug, Pat Lewis, Jim Rugg, George Schill, and Mark Zingarelli, and showcase some of the amazing cartoon talent based in the city. Two dollars from the sale of each bottle will directly benefit the ToonSeum.

  This is a worthy trend and I would like to encourage it. Those of you in western Pennsylvania, go forth and drink beer to support comics.

Andy Bell‘s Android figures were much anticipated by me. Then they went on sale and disappeared in minutes, leaving me a sad camper. Then Bell brought a small stock with him to MoCCA ’10 and I scored two of the blind-boxed wonders. Now, thanks to the generosity of a collector (and compatriot from the old Goats forums) who scored a stack, I have been given the opportunity to purchase duplicates and have nearly the entire set. They loom over my head as I type these words, menacing, casting off the volatile gases that constitute “new toy smell”, and ready to destroy me the moment I let down my guard. Hooray!

• Speaking of Goats, the third volume of The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, Showcase Showdown, is up for pre-order. This will complete the three-part saga that took the long-running webcomic from the two guys sitting around drinking beer story model that it pioneered (now, commonly found in webcomicdom) to the groundbreaking two guys alternately imperiling and vaguely attempting to save the universe, but they’d rather be drinking beer story model that continues to break ground (and occasionally my brain).

  With luck (and an assist from you), the three-book package (commissioned back before the economy went poof) will have done well enough that Random House will re-up for the next three-book set. These are handsome volumes, and as soon as I’ve got a copy in my hands, the megastory represented by these pages will get the long-overdue writeup here that is deserves.

• Speaking of both deserving things, and things wrapping up, did you see the latest costume redesign contest at Project: Rooftop has announced winners? Black Canary has her makeover, and I can’t help but notice that Carly Monardo is once again one of the top finishers. After her second place result in the Wonder Woman contest, and her giving BC a costume that I think would get a favorable critique from the guy who is correct about such things, I think it’s now official: DC and Marvel need to have Ms Monardo redesign costumes for their entire line of heroes.
• Speaking of heroes — Hey kids, do you know what tomorrow is? Besides the day that my rail fares go up by a tremendous amount, dammit (PDF)? It’s Free Comic Book Day, and you’ll find a variety of webcomickers doing things all over the damn place. Assuming you live in any of those places, give ’em some love, and remember: all those free-to-you books cost the stores money. Buy something.

Not that long ago, I described Elena “Yamino” Barbarich’s Sister Claire as relentlessly cute and just the right amount of blasphemous; to that I think we can describe it as merciful. Freshly returned from two site hackings, Yamino has decided not to become vengeful and yea, call down furious anger on those that perpetrated evil, but to spread a little joy about:

I decided I would try to organize my own charity project (as you can never have too many of those!) While trying to think of an original way for webcomic artists to earn money, I remembered a Sister Claire food contest I held back in December 2009. Every reader who sent in an entry received a postcard from Sister Claire herself.

The readers loved it, and it was so much fun writing personal messages in character! And so I thought, “Wouldn’t it be AWESOME if a ton of cool webcomic artists did this to raise money?” And thus, the Webcomic Charity was born.

Short form — participating creators design a custom postcard on a template, as well as contribute to a general design with all of their characters. People that donate a certain amount to the drive get the general postcard, but those that donate a higher amount get one of the limited cards written by the character.

I’m not playing favorites, but the thought of getting a postcard from Wonderella (sample imaginary text: Hey, thanks for giving money, you’re almost like a hero. I mean, crap, not like I’m a hero — I have a cape! — but as much as one of you people could manage. Now I sign this? Okay.) would be worth quite a bit in some quarters that happen to coincide with my house.

Anyway, the list of participants is growing rapidly, and the which charity? poll is trending towards Kiva right now (webcomics has a history there, after all), and all your questions are probably answered at the Webcomics Charity site.

In other news, a little behind Neil Patrick Harris and Prince, and ahead of Simon Cowell, Ricky Gervais, and James Cameron: Mike ‘new dad’ Krahulik and Jerry ‘also a dad, just not so new’ Holkins have been declared the 14th most influential artists in the world by Time magazine (or at least, by an online poll that Time ran, although it appears they’ve learned how to harden their software against ballot-stuffing, in that 4chan doesn’t seem to have had an effect this year). Well done guys, and next see if you can’t be more important than Sparkly Vampire Boy.

For those of you in the Portland area, Comics Month (as declared by Mayor Hunky) is in full swing, and that means it’s nearly time for the Stumptown Comics Fest to get under way. The exhibitor list may now be cross referenced against a map, and there’s only a few zillion webcomickers gonna be there.

• Among the attendees (“Guest”, if you wanna be pedantic, presumably “of Honor”) will be Hope Larson, whom some of you may be able to see at the West Coast iteration of Drink and Draw Like a Lady (with props to Dylan Meconis for local organization and Hurricane Erika for the poster — if you see Erika, ask her to do a shot in honor of me pre-ordering her book).
• While there, you might want to congratulate Larson for her latest news. As surely all have heard by now, she’ll be adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s classic of YA SF, A Wrinkle in Time as a graphic novel. This is terrific news, as I can’t imagine anybody less talented than Larson able to tackle a book that’s so widely read, so intensely beloved, and which contains concepts and characters that are so difficult to visualize, forcing every reader to come up with mental images that are surely unlike anybody else’s.

  Handled poorly, everybody that picks up the book would protest That’s not what travelling through a tesseract/Mrs Which/IT looks like!, but I have every expectation that Larson will rise to the challenge and produce something her own, yet recognizably familiar to all and sundry.

  Still doubting? Consider that every work that Larson has done has somehow been stronger than the previous. If, a few months ago, I thought that Larson had reached a peak of visual storytelling with Mercury, I previously thought the same of Chiggers, and Gray Horses, and Salamander Dream. True, adaptation is a different kind of beast, but I’m hopeful.

• Speaking of Mercury, might it be possible that one of you creative types could ensure that it’s properly considered for a Harvey Award? Nominations (from anybody who writes, draws, inks, letters, colors, designs, edits, or otherwise makes comics) remain open until the 23rd of April, so hop to it. While I’m on the topic, any number of people over there to the right are also probably deserving of your nomination.
• Finally, this: having previously been made into an opera, Dinosaur Comics (which sometimes gets no love from the arbiters of taste) has now crossed over into the ultimate of musical expressions: a marching band routine via the justly-famed¹ (and slightly deranged) Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band.

_______________
¹ It wasn’t me; I was still in high school and can’t even play the trombone.

So there are hints in the aether, here and there, that the Webcomics Town Hall at C2E2 didn’t go entirely well (although the information I’ve been able to gather is at times contradictory). I wasn’t there, and haven’t seen a specific writeup on the issue; given the talent promised in the session listing, it should have been a case of point ’em at the question and stay out of their way = surefire success, but apparently not? If anybody who was in the audience would care to comment, please do so.

• Success or failure of the panel aside, C2E2 appears to have been sufficiently lucrative for many to come back next year — although apparently there’s a confusion about whether or not the pricing of webcomics pavilion tables for next year because the sign-up sheet didn’t have a specific tickbox for that option. Reports are that the pavilion option does exist, although this far in advance, the specific layout of the space may not be known. If you were thinking about exhibiting there next year, a careful inquiry may be of benefit to you.
• Also of note from C2E2: Carla Speed McNeil (who, like the Foglios before her, took her critical-darling print comic to the web, and took an Eisner for Best Webcomic in 2009 as a result), looks to be getting back into a fresh release schedule for her collections, having partnered up with Dark Horse.

  Lots of reporting of the announcement, but let’s go with Brigid Alverson’s writeup for Robot 6. This is awesome news, as I have already bought all the Finder volumes in print, and wish to give Ms McNeil money for the story that has only appeared (thus far) online. Hooray for me.

• In news from the far (i.e.: the “no-fly zone”) side of the Atlantic, professional bastard and Internet Jesus Warren Ellis has declared it Webcomics Week, with the opportunity to pimp your webcomic to all and sundry:
  

  You do a webcomic? Tell me about it here. Not more than one or two images, please, or else the thread takes forever to load. Don’t forget the bloody link.

  Relax. There are only 8000 members of Whitechapel reading, plus god knows how many drop-ins who aren’t registered members.

  Let’s get a sense of who’s around and who’s doing what. Create me a big list.

  And tell your friends.

  NOTE: this is not for people to list their favourite webcomics. We’ve done that before. Boring.

  Go to it. And if you like this service (previously irregular, but which now promises to be monthly), do thank the Bearded One by looking over his wares, why don’t you? Mr Ellis has had a clever idea going for a while now — each week, a new t-shirt design goes up for sale for that week only, then disappearing from view forever. Until now, when all the previous weekly tees are making a one-week only return engagement. Want to be a Science Gangster, Space Bastard, or person without a functioning liver? Now’s your chance.

Task after task getting its ass kicked by me, and actually a little reluctant to take a break and talk to y’all; nothing personal, I’m just on fire today.

• So C2E2 kicks off tomorrow, and those of you in the greater Chicagoland area ought to drop by — Reed Exhibitions have put together a webcomics area on the show floor, and as this is the first iteration of this particular show, we want to thank them by making sure that particular location is crowded as all get-out. On this map, you’d be looking at the top center region, in the 860/960 block, up near the Tattoo Pavillion, then head left for the next couple of table blocks, and that’s all webcomics.

  Only thing I’m not sure about on this diagram is where the entrances are, but I think they’re both at the bottom and the right sides of the diagram. Before you get too attached to that corner, be sure to check out Artist Alley and booth 625, Haven Distributors, who’ll have some creators in their “Indy Island” (look for the palm trees!); AA is along the left-hand wall, and 625 is about as close to the center of the hall as you can get.

• While you’re out there in Chicago, be sure to drop in on David Malki !TopatoCo booth and ask him about The Devastator (it helps if you read that in the voice of the late Jan Gabriel). Lasst week, Geoffrey Golden kickstarted the project (currently sitting about 52% funded):
  

  [A] brand-new book series, jam-stuffed with original satire and comics. Coming at you quarterly, it’s 48 full-color pages of awesome, created by upcoming and renowned writers and artists. Each book will wrestle a different pop-culture theme- Book #1 is all about cartoons!

  The reason you should ask Mr Malki ! is that he’s part of Book #1 (with a history of Inspector Gadget’s origins in the Victorian era), along with such luminaries as James Urbaniak (on voice acting for fun & profit) and R. Sikoryak (on Greek myth/the newspaper comics page). We’re seeing a lot more fairly high-profile comics … undertakings? projects? … getting spearheaded by people outside the comics industry, motivated solely by their love of the form.

  It’s an encouraging trend, particularly if it proves to be a meeting ground for independent creators and creatives from other industries. Golden? Writer and producer, with a foot in TV & videogame industries. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that TV & videogame money is something that webcomics should be aspiring towards; I am saying the broader our little creative niche networks itself, the better for all involved. I’ll give you an example of my thinking: Matt Groening loved funny comics as a kid, didn’t see any on the shelves, created his own imprint, and doesn’t care if it makes money, so long as he gets funnybooks each month.

  Now, imagine if one or two of Bongo’s key people were to brush up against some of webcomics finest and start talking shop … there’s potential there, waiting to be explored. Anyway, if you see Malki !, ask him his take on The Devastator, and let’s see what Book #1 looks like in a few months.

So the MoCCA Art Fest was held over the weekend, and at the end of it, I think everybody had a collective sigh of relief. The heat and organizational problems that plagued last years show didn’t recur. The crowds moved easily and, from the webcomics folks I spoke to, were eager to snap up stuff. The show was a success, and much fun was had, and I got a bunch of stuff. Let’s recap, shall we?

• For me, one of the big thrills was meeting people that I hadn’t before — Jess Fink, Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, Dorothy Gambrell were awesome to make the acquaintance of (whoo, tortured syntax, but I think you take my meaning), and only after I’d left did I realize that I’d missed meeting Andrew Hussie — dang. I also enjoyed meeting more of the crew from :01 Books, because I think they’re putting out the best line of graphic novels in existence right now — thanks to Gina Gagliano for putting me on their distribution list, and to Colleen AF Venable for designing such good-looking books.
• Speaking of Ms Venable, she’s got her own book out now — Hamster & Cheese, the first of a series of six kids books starring a reluctant guinea pig PI, and illustrated by the mightily talented Stephanie Yue. I learned a lot about snakes from the notes in the back of the book, including the following critical information:
  

  If snakes slowly dissolve their food, does this mean they don’t poop? Nope! Snakes poop. They don’t poop very often. When they do — how can I say this nicely? It’s a bit watery. [emphasis original]

  Not only informative, Hamster & Cheese is likely the best kids book of the show in a particular category; I don’t know if publishers have a fancy words for this, but H&C is laid out more like a short graphic novel than anything — panels, word balloons, the works.

• For traditional kids book (whole-page illustrations, text narrating the events), you’d have to go with the very handsome Golden Books tribute, Tigerbuttah by Beck Dreistadt & Frank Gibson. Full disclosure: I was (am?) a Kickstarter supporter of this book, so assume that I was inclined to like it anway. Fact of the matter is, reading this thing is a kick in the childhood nostalgia gland — pokey little puppies and engines that could start swirling in your brain just holding this thing, and seeing the way that the ink looks on the paper stock would drag anybody back to those first experiences of reading on your very own. This book is a marvel, plain and simple, and anybody in the creative industries with any measurable amount of brain should be driving a dumptruck full of money up to Frank & Becky’s front door.
• Weirdly enough, I got a very similar reaction from reading David McGuire’s The 12 Labours of Gastrophobia, even though it could hardly be more different that Tigerbuttah; I think it’s the smell, actually — the aroma of ink and paper is very reminiscent of the books I had as a kid, and the use of white paper with red and black inks also reminds me of the limited color palettes that were the hallmark of books for so very long.

  More than merely dredging out 35 year old memories, McGuire’s choice of color serves him very well, as it makes the entire book look like it could have been drawn on amphorae. As a bonus, there’s an index in the back so you can see which pages were originally animated online, or where webcomics cameos are to be found. He’s also done the best job I’ve ever seen presenting a back-cover bar code.

• Elsewhere, Aaron Diaz had the haunted look of a man that didn’t get nearly enough food or bathroom breaks, mixed with the happy realization that it was because he was swamped with fans wanting his wares. His 2010 sketchbook offers a good look at his (previously seen on Twitter) inspired-by-Tolkien speed paintings (each featuring dominant colors that really resonate emotionally), and news that Dresden Codak will feature more of the Tokamak twins gladdens my heart.
• Just across the aisle, Hope Larson‘s newly-released Mercury was going great guns, and Box Brown‘s Everything Dies #1 & #2 offered up a primer on a pretty wide range of metaphysical beliefs. Jon Rosenberg had an advanced copy of his forthcoming third volume of Goats, which featured the funniest foreword I’ve ever read, courtesy of Lore Sjöberg.
• To all of this one may add the always-delightful presences of (in no particular order) Chris Yates, Ryan North, Raina Telgemeier & Dave Roman (from whom, we now know, there will not be a second volume of X-Men: Misfits, victim of an expired license), Chris Hastings & Carly Monardo (the latter now in a starring role in the new print from Bernie Hou), R Stevens, Sam Brown, Magnolia Porter, Andy Bell, David Malki !, Scott C, Danielle Corsetto (not showing, just wandering the floor and enjoying herself), Kate Beaton, Jeph Jacques (counting the days until C2E2 is done and he can bring home his new dog), various NERDS, Jeff Rowland (who put together the new Axe Cop store at TopatoCo with his laptop and phone on the ride to New York because we are living in the goddamned future), Jen Babcock (who recently did a talk at The Met pointing out that a form of ancient Egyptian popular art was essentially comics in general and Five Card Nancy in particular) and generally more talent than one can shake a stick at, which is why I’m certain that I’ve forgotten half the names I meant to include here, because I wasn’t writing things down. Mea culpa.

Additional photos: My “beards & moustaches” sketchbook grows ever closer to full, with a gorgeous addition from Hope Larson; Dave Roman does the world’s first SFW moustache ride; Kimiko Ross discovers new feelings; a T-Rex grows his beard long enough to stroke with his tiny arms; teenage Raina finds something worse than headgear; and Chester 5000 XYV sprouts a new attachment.

I hadn’t mentioned this before, but the final attendance for the inaugural PAX East: 52,900, capped largely by space availability. Given the size differential between the Hynes Convention Center (ignore the little text label, it’s the building on Boylston that has the round structure in the northeast corner) and the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (site of future PAX East iterations), I’m predicting the attendee count will flirt with 100,000 before the current three-year deal with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority expires.

To put this in perspective, the BCEC in 2008 (the most recent year I could find numbers for, and prior to the economy pitching a wobbly) listed its most economically impactful conventions as having attendances between 3800 and 35,000 attendees (PDF, page 3), from a total attendance of 444,000 – 489,000 (depending on whether you count fiscal years or calendar years; PDF, page 17). Any way you care to crunch those numbers, PAX East has already significantly increased the convention attendance of a major city, and will only do so to a greater degree in the future.

• Other numbers: 4 and 1000. The former is the number of years that Chris Hallbeck’s The Book of Biff has been running as of today, and the latter would be the update number that Mr Eyebrows will hit on Monday.
• Still another number: 7. Or, more precisely, 07, as in Eben07, shadowy master of espionage and general master of tradecraft. Process documents regarding Mr 07’s working methods are rumored to have surfaced, and in a stunning example of hiding in plain sight, will be displayed in a public art event in Sacramento, CA tomorrow.

  The organizers of the public art display claim no knowledge of this occurrence, but we’ve intercepted written documentation that we believe to be credible. Investigate thoroughly, and remember — the safety of the free world depends on … <signal lost>

The train was mostly empty and the sidewalks are pretty sparsely populated — hooray for people takin’ the day to celebrate a holiday. On the other hand, the internets are a bit emptier than usual as well, so we’ll have to content ourselves with a relatively sedate posting. I trust that all of you are outside enjoying the nice weather right now and wouldn’t notice a short update anyway.

• After yesterday’s Nedroidariffic episode of Dinosaur Comics (now reverted to its normal state), Ryan North (who bestrides webcomics like unto a colossus) has gifted us with the ability to bring back Reginald & Beartato. Behold: &butiwouldratherbereading=. By applying characters to a mask (look closely for the white parts … that’s where art can be added) and overlaying it on any comic in his archive, North can provide us with a near-inifite variety of different characters. Would you rather be reading Nedroid? Achewood? Wigu? Gotcha covered, Bunky. My favorite involves monologues from T-Rexkcd, particularly when discussing nerdery at which I have expertise. As an added bonus, the Unixkcd interface from yesterday now has a permanent home.
• In other news, we at Fleen undoubtedly missed plenty of April Foolery (including the silent-in-the-Owly-sense update to Unshelved), and completely neglected to take proper notice of the conclusion of the first Bad Machinëry story arc. The rivalry in mystery solving between Boys and Girls takes on a touching aspect as Shauna and Jack appear to be far less en-rivalled than previously known. That look on Shauna’s face in the last panel, the effort that Jack has to go to in order to compliment her … John Allison has perfectly captured that moment when flirting first starts to vaguely seem like a good idea, but you’re not quite sure why. The next week of downtime prior to the start of the next story will be too long.
• David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®™©^etc is justly famous for his quiet, patient way with supplementary material over at Irregular Webcomic, and never have I seen so much as an angry word from his hand. Yet today he is a seething cauldron of primal rage/deathlust, but it’s directed at those responsible for Monopoly, so that’s all right. If you want to read a very good explanation for why you’ve always hated playing that friggin’ “game”, click away (and make sure you have the annotations turned on).
• Upcoming: Wondercon is kicking off pretty much as we speak, MoCCA hits next weekend (curiously, no mention of press access ever showed up on their website, which was late to update … guess I’ll pay the $15), and the New York iteration of Drink & Draw Like A Lady hits next Friday evening in Chelsea. And best of all, it’s official: Webcomics Weekend (the famous original, accept-no-substitutes fun times) has announced for November 6 & 7. Details on the last forthcoming, and I’ll see you at at least two of those.