Daisy Owl, friend to moustachery everywhere.

• Okay, this sucks: Kean Soo‘s most famous work, the award-winning Jellaby, is losing half its presence in print. For reasons beyond our Earth Logic, Disney-Hyperion are yanking Jellaby volume 1 from print:
  

  It was, I presume, a financial decision on the part of my publisher, Disney-Hyperion, even though the book has been a modest success by comic standards (more than 18,000 copies sold over the span of 21 months), and had been slowly picking up readers as time went on. Having Jellaby off the shelves does create an unfortunate situation, however — the second book, Jellaby: Monster in the City, is the conclusion of the story that runs through both books, and by removing the availability of the first book, Monster in the City is in danger of leading a shortened life as well, being a now- incomplete second half to a two-part story.

  Now, I’m no publishing mogul, but it seems to me that if you have something that sells, then making more means you can sell more. So yeah, terrific logic there, Disney-Hyperion. Heckuva job. Bottom line, if you want a copy of this utterly charming book, better grab it now. Those of you that plan on having children some day, get a copy or two now and lay them down like fine wine for your progeny to enjoy in the future.

• How about some good news that relates to our Northerly Friends? The Toronto Comics Art Festival has had a reputation for being one of the best shows on the circuit, and 2010 marks the move from biannual to annual occurrences. Furthermore, the exhibitors list has been released, with the guests forming a veritable who’s who of our chosen artform. In addition to Mr Soo, in no particular order, you got yer Spike, yer Doc Hastings, yer John Campbell, and yer KC Green.

  Want more? You also have Graham Annable, Kate Beaton, Box Brown, Danielle Corsetto, Joey Comeau & Emily Horne, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Rene Engström, Meredith Gran, Chris Hallbeck, Andrew Hussie, Jeph Jacques, Lucy Knisley, Sam Logan, Davids Malki ! and Maguire, Dylan Meconis, Hurricane Erika, The Toronto Man-Mountain, Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier, Jon Rosenberg, Jeff Rowland & the TopatoCo crüe, Rich Stevens, and Jim Zubkavich, plus about a million others that I’ve no doubt missed on the list.

  Whew. My travel plans for the spring aren’t entirely set yet (there’s this pretty awesome out-of-state post-wedding party-up later in May), but I hope to attend TCAF if only to say howdy to all the incredible talent that will be attending. But whether I make it there or not, if you’re not doing anything much, much cooler on May 8th & 9th, the Toronto Reference Library will be the place to be.

Editor’s Note: The post below is preserved in its original, clumsy, only marginally useful form. A pretty extensive clarification may be found here.

From Ladies Love Cool Brad, news about why Webcomics Dot Com might be worth the thirty bucks:

Subscribers to Webcomics.com are eligible to get tables in the Webcomics Pavilion area of the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) for a special creators’ discount of 15%, or $60 off the list price of $400.

Guigar later clarified on his twitterfeed that the tables in question are 2′ x 8′ and are not in the Artists Alley — they are in the webcomics area¹. This … this is interesting. I’ll be very intrigued if Guigar manages to line up similar sponsorship/discount packages for his subscribers. If he does, he’s just one eco-friendly tote bag away from duplicating the model of public broadcasting across the country.

In other news, we mentioned the success of Girl Genius in the online poll at The Washington Post‘s comics blog search for Best Comic of the Decade. Having see the Foglios run away with the victory, there’s now an open call for nominations for Best Webcomic of the Past Decade. Curiously, nobody has mentioned Hark A Vagrant or MS Paint Adventures yet. Perhaps one of you should remedy that.

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¹ Keep in mind that C2E2 is run by Reed Exhibitions, the people behind the New York Comic Con, and the forthcoming Pax East; it’s the NYCC show that prompts me to mention this. I don’t know if it’s Reed, or just union rules at the Javits Center, but the table space there notoriously included only the space.

If you want, say, an actual table, a chair, or something plugged into an electric jack, you need to contract separately for such at rates that sit somewhere between extortion and science fiction. More than one exhibitor at NYCC was seen to buy cheap tables and chairs at local big-box stores and abandon them after the show, and still pay less money than rental would have been.

Mr Madsen and R Stevens both celebrate their respective births today, woo. In gratitude to all of you, Stevens has unleashed a veritable cornucopia of pixellated delights: 33% off socks today, a dinoriffic t-shirt, and custom pixel portraits commissions until the end of the month. In honor of his generosity, I direct you all to what may well be Stevens’s holy book.

• As long as we’re celebrating birthdays, one might note that Sam Brown’s Exploding Dog is now ten years old, and Registered Weapon by Gardner Linn, Chris Thorn, Dave Lentz, and Rob Simmons, is a year old. When the inevitable world-wide holiday to celebrate webcomics is someday declared, I guess that 12 January will be the natural choice.
• Missed this last week, but it’s not yet hit the ‘sell by’ date, so I think we’re good: Ryan North got interviewed at Question Riot on the topic of his webcomics infrastructure efforts. If you were curious about Oh No Robot, RSSPECT or Project Wonderful, get yourself over there immediately.
• Question: who, in all of [web]comickry, is nicer than Raina Telgemeier? Since the Dalai Lama doesn’t do comics, I’d gonna go with “nobody”, and you can share in the niceness in person. To celebrate the imminent release of her graphic novel (from the webcomic of the same name), SMILE, Telgemeier will be having a launch party on Saturday, 13 February at Rocketship in Brooklyn. There will be a live reading, braces-friendly food, and possibly a Valentine’s Day theme (NB: I haven’t confirmed this, but I’m pretty sure that Raina’s valentine is her husband, Dave, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up if I were you). If all that isn’t enough to entice you, the bar next door to Rocketship does outrageously good cocktails. With any luck, I’ll see you there.

‘Cause this is the time of year that my friends are provided with astonishingly good (if I do say so myself) full-fat baked goods. Nummers!

• Speaking of being friends, Paul Abbamondi does a little thing called My Life Comics; over the weekend, he proposed to his girlfriend in that space. The bad news is that she is now his ex-girlfriend; the good news is that she’s now his <Holly Hunter voice>fi-anse</Holly Hunter voice>. Webcomics: a force for both good and attaching yourself in a life-long manner to totally awesome ladies.
• Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Cartoon Art Musuem, whose association with webcomickry is extensively chronicled on this page. We at Fleen salute the fine work done by CAM, which includes:
  

  [T]he collection, preservation and display of original cartoon art in all its forms. Today, the Cartoon Art Museum is still serving the San Francisco Bay Area and the artistic community through exhibitions, community outreach and public programming. A full and exciting roster of exhibitions and programs are being prepared for the coming year, and we are very thankful for all of the support and encouragement that we have received over the past 25 years, and look forward to continuing to fulfill our mission statement as it was conceived back in 1984.

  In a stunning coincidence, the anniversary happens to coincide with the start of their annual fund drive; if you’re looking to snag a last-minute deduction on your taxes, there’s far worse places to donate a couple bucks. C’mon, you got the money to drop on a fancy-ass Starbucks drink, you can spare a tenner for the cause.

• Finally, I was going to comment on how Brad Guigar was noting the crossing of the 3000 strip mark in the Greystone Inn/Evil, Inc. continuum, and I was gonna get all smartass about how if you count his emergency auxilliary classy strip and his world’s only sex strip that doesn’t show sex, ol’ Brad had hit the Big Round Number of 3357. Then he went and did the math himself, leaving me without a lede. Thanks, Brad, and “congratulations”¹.

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¹ See if you get any cheesecake, mister. Rassa-frassin’ stealing my bit.

Here’s a couple of things to tide you over:

• I think this is going to be a standard thing in the future: the exhibitor’s list for TCAF ’10 as Twitter list. Easy to update to reflect changes, and more than just a static blurb, there’s interaction with the exhibitors for the fans.
• A pair of new webcomics inspired by videogames noted today: via occasional Fleen contributor Jeff Lowrey points us towards a new casual-gaming strip from James Francis of Babylon Sticks. And via the XX-Man’s Twitterfeed a Team Fortress webcomic; this one’s got a story and every damn thing! It appears to be a one-off, providing a bit of color to a game event, but what the heck — the idea of a thoroughly evil woman egging these murderous teams on at each other for her own nefarious purposes certainly puts a new spin on the game.
• Mike Ciccotello is a guy I met at my local bookstore, at one of Patrick McDonnell approximately-annual does a talk/readings. Mike has done a bunch of [web]comics (initially as a strip, more recently of the editorial variety), and spends the occasional day as Brad Guigar’s convention henchman. Just you’re average, everyday Renaissance Man with a day job and a wife who thinks he’s pretty nifty and an unusual venue for his latest art.

  So there’s this guy named John Stossel, right? Once upon a time he was a “expose the scammer” type of television journalist type, and lately he’s just kind of a libertarian who doesn’t believe in regulation; whatever you think of his politics or his reporting, he sports a formidable moustache. He’s got a new show on Fox Business, and for an upcoming piece he’ll be running portraits by Ciccotello of characters from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

  Ayn Rand is one of those writers whose appeal escapes me utterly (and also must bear responsibility for the existence of the “Objectivist Club” at RPI, whose members during my graduate education pissed me off more than any other human beings that I’ve met in person, with the exception of Jack Thompson), but Ciccotello’s artwork is really nice. The plan was for them to run last night, but I gather that Stossel decided to celebrate the opening of the Copehagen conference by talking about how global warming is a good thing. As soon as the story airs, we’ll share the art with you.

Let’s keep this brief.

• Neal Adams is widely regarded as one of the most significant comics artists of the Silver Age, and if you started reading comic books when artists still bothered to draw feet, chances are that Adams was responsible for your mental image of Batman and Superman. And who is Adams collaborating with? Scott Kurtz, on the PvP Christmas storyline. I’ma go out on a limb here and guess that for Kurtz to be more excited, it would take Jack Kirby coming back from the dead and adding some krackle to a Skull fart gag.

  Actually, that would rule.

• T-Rex auction to benefit Child’s Play (which, as of earlier today, is up over US$1.2 million this season; what economic meltdown?). Fine hug-receptable manufacturer Squishables is putting up for auction a fine representation of the late Cretaceous haps-asker, complete with accessories:
  

  [N]ot only do you get a Squishable T-rex, but you get all of the things from the comic that Squishable T-Rex wants to squish:

  • A big blue car!
  • A moderate sized log cabin!
  • A tiny tiny woman!

  How about a print-out of the original design document for this awesome squishable? How about if Ryan [North, creator of Dinosaur Comics] and Zoe [designer from Squishables] both sign the print out? Would that be cool enough for you? Yeah, we thought so.

  As of this writing, the auction is up to a paltry US$81, but there’s about six days to go. Get cracking.

• New book from A Softer World! Launch party for the new book from A Softer World! The fun (and, if ASW scribe Joey Comeau’s past behavio[u]r is any indication, ball-punching) next Monday, December 14th, at 7:00pm in Montréal’s Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore/Librairie Drawn & Quarterly.
• Finally, most significantly, Anders Loves Maria is hurtling towards conclusion, and Rene Engström has gifted us with a six-page update. There is annoyance at juvenile antics. There is the sudden realization that it’s happening, now. There is the need to know what’s happening. There is the fearful realization that in this life nothing is guaranteed, a new life, and the terrifying realization that you can be powerless in the face of something so small and helpless.

  These characters that feel so real, that have loved and fought and fucked and fucked up and reconciled and broken themselves and each other, their journey with us is coming to an end. Not all of those ends are going to end well. It’s still not certain that our principals will decide they want each other more than they don’t. Whatever happens to Anders, Maria, and their child, I suspect that I will end up some degree of heartbroken, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you’re of the inclination to Give Stuff at this time of year, please note that many of the fine vendors of webcomickry are approaching sales deadlines, depending on where in the world you might be.

• In other news, an end-of-year tradition returns — Xaviar Xerexes having taken 2008 off from compiling a roundtable discussion of webcomics issues (and predictions) is back in the saddle again. Look for that in the immediate future as the participants (including, rumor has it, a hack webcomics pseudojournalist) get their punditry into the XX-man for aggregation.
• I can’t wait to see what the official response of Dragon*Con (if any) to this is. Either Ryan Sohmer is lying through his teeth and D*C have bounced him for entirely justifiable reasons (which I find unlikely given his careful, businesslike nature and innate Canadian politeness), or he’s correct and D*C have to save serious face by spinning furiously. The truth could be somewhere in the middle, but somehow I don’t think things could have spun so spectacularly out of control that way; in any event, just being quiet and hoping it all goes away isn’t a viable strategy.
• The ivory halls of Artsy Folk (are they ivory? I know that academia is … maybe they’re just “shining towers” or “exemplars of culture” or something like that) are taking note of our niche of late. Case in point: Dallas Art News sent invitations to participants of last month’s Dallas Webcomics Expo to contribute to an exhibit of sorts, entitled Webcomics Imitating Art.

  While at first blush that title seems slightly … snippy? … it actually refers to the theme at play: creators would use their own characters & aesthetic to recreate or reference famous works of art. The creators that answered the call produced homages to works by the likes of Grant Wood (American Gothic), Andy Warhol (Marilyn), Edvard Munch (The Scream), Jan van Eyck (Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife), Leonardo da Vinci (Vitruvian Man), Michelangelo Buonarroti (Two Muscular Guys Touching Fingers), and more.

  The original plan was that the webcomickry would coincide with an already-planned tour, but it got postponed; nevertheless, the art kept coming in (and non-DWEX exhibitors jumped on the bandwagon), resulting in a total of 19 pieces. Participants and art are shown at the link; most of those involved appear to have relatively modestly-trafficked sites, meaning that many more people now have the opportunity to get exposed to their work. Click, dig in, and find something new to enjoy.

So Cameron Stewart (who is not Kristen Stewart‘s brother, so please stop emailing him asking for her) spent most of a month in Europe with his studiomates; they went many places and saw many people and drew many neato things and drank a lot. But maybe the most interesting thing was done as the iPhone equivalent of finger-painting — not wanting to weigh himself down with sketchbooks, he used Brushes for the iPhone to do some really interesting work. Go check ’em out and ask yourself if you could do that with the tip of your little finger; I sure as hell couldn’t.

• Schlock Mercenary iPhone app approved, available now. Those of us on Android suck, I guess.
  
• My one must-buy item every Christmas is the new pack of Wondermark calendar cards; they’re back!
• The MoCCA Art Festival of Aught-Nine had some problems, nobody is disputing that. There needs to be a much more smoothly-running show this year, or it may well be in danger of shedding the higher-profile exhibitors. In order to deal with the heat problem, the show is moving almost two months forward, to 9 & 10 April. And programming organization has been started good and early, the better to get a well-developed curriculum put together. The Panel Director will be Brian Heater, editor and founder of the alternative comics review and interview site, The Daily Cross Hatch; the Program Director will be Jeff Newalt, the “Minister of Hype” of ACT-I-VATE; more on both from MoCCA:
  

  [Heater’s] writing has appeared in Spin, The Onion, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Press, The Oklahoma Gazette, The Metro Santa Cruz, Heeb, Skyscraper, Rockpile, DIW, Comic Foundry, and various other magazines and websites. He also works as a senior editor at PC Magazine.

  Newelt is comics editor of SMITH, Heeb, and Royal Flush magazines. He is editor / producer of The Pekar Project on SMITH as well as a PR / social media consultant for clients including Paul Pope, Doug Rushkoff, DJ Spooky, Molly Crabapple, CBLDF, Rick Veitch, Larry Marder, NBM Publishing and other comics / culture / media superheroes.

  So hopefully, that’s all right. They won’t be able to do anything about logistical anomalies, but a strong set of programming tracks will go a long way to re-establishing the show’s greatness. We at Fleen look forward to seeing how they do.

Is this a first? I think it might be a first. Scott Kurtz needs to show a character’s comic strip work in-story, and he got KC Green to supply the art. Having a completely different artist (with a different aesthetic and different approach to humor) provide in-continuity work in this fashion is something with enormous potential and I’d love to see how other webcomics might use this approach.

• Speaking of Kurtz and Green, they’ll be guests of the Webcomics Rampage next weekend in Austin, with some of the luminaries of the medium doing the in-store meet/greet thing. Those of you in Texas, check it out. Those of you in Portland, Legends of Webcomics takes place at Dunning-Kruger Solutions (i.e.: Meredith & Aaron’s studio) this Saturday, with more luminaries. Finally, every remaining webcomics luminary will be at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco for Monsters of Webcomics: Webcomic-Con 2009 on Saturday the 12th. If your favorite creators aren’t at any of these, I guess they just aren’t luminous enough.
• Just over a day remains to buy yourself (or a loved one) a sort-of guest appearance in Schlock Mercenary; let’s let my evil twin tell the story:
  

  The upcoming “Mallcop Command” chapter will feature several human side-characters, all of whom need names. In the spirit of giving, we’ve decided to auction off the rights to put your name (or a friend’s name) on one of those characters. The proceeds of these auctions will benefit the Utah County Family Support and Treatment Center, which helps families in crisis and works to prevent abuse. The winner of each auction will supply the name, and Howard will decide how to apply it. This is a great gift for that hard-to-shop-for Schlock fan in your life.

  Please note that unlike corporations buying naming rights to things like the local sports stadium, there’s no guarantee that your namesake will be around for the long haul; Tayler reserves the right to kill off any/all of these background players in horrible and/or amusing ways. More details of what you get if you’re the winner at Tayler’s blog, and the auctions themselves are handily aggregated onto one page here. As of press time, the auctions have raised a hair over $375; it would be nice to hit a nice round number like $500.

• Yeah, can’t really work the “guest” theme into this one; Alice Hunt of Goodbye Chains needs some assistance to make a shared resource complete:
  

  As a service to our readers, we’ve been working on a little project for a while now: a comprehensive listing of historical webcomics. We’d like it to be exhaustive, but the Internet is vast and wide, and I’m sure there’s plenty we don’t have on the list. Could we enlist your help (and maybe the help of your readers) in fleshing it out?

  If you’re aware of comics that we missed, would you be so kind as to let us know?

  That would be webcomics with a theme/subject matter that’s historical in nature, not webcomics that are themselves history-making. You’ll get the idea, just take a peek at the list and let the GC crew know of any they should add.

Holy crap you guys, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened — T-Rex has decided to start stomping, and he’s stomping a half-dozen Admiral Ackbars. There’s no way that can turn out well. Guess you’ll need to find a home for him as far away from any Ackbars that might still be running for their lives.

• In other trap-related news, the 2010 Eisners have opened up their nominations, with the specifics in the PDF here. The category potentially of interest to readers of this blog is described as:
  

  he best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2009. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to us by clicking here.

  Why “trap-related”? Because this category has a history of changing the interpretation of “long-form original comics work” from year to year, just waiting to ensnare the unwary potential nominee. Strips appear to be out, but does the story have to be over and done with? Would on ongoing, serialized story with a clear beginning, middle, and end (although not completed in 2009) be eligible? ‘Cause there’s a bunch of those that represent some of the best of comics but I don’t think they’ll be considered (despite some of those being considerably similar in scope and long-formness to one of last year’s nominees).

  How long is “long-form”? What about a single storyline from an ongoing comic? Or something that actually requires a digital presentation? Venture into these waters carefully, but let’s see if we can’t get some consideration for some of our best work, yes?

• My God — it’s full of Rikers. You may be trapped here half the day soaking up the awesome.
• Aspiring cartooners still have more than a week to enter the guest-strip contest at Calamaties of Nature; the trap here is that you could end up with a comic running on a site that disrespects moustaches. Tread carefully before you make a deal with The Devil.
• Up for a little casual blasphemy? From (to the best of the knowledge, previously unrepresented in the world of webcomickry) Slovenia comes Paradise Misplaced, where each week God tries to get creation going and those pesky humans find a new way to not quite get it right. Produced by the not-at-all-pseudonymous Anonymous Gosh, it’s got a lot of R. Crumb influence, by way of The PBF perhaps. Readers, naturally, run the risk of offending the ineffable name and being trapped in dire punishments for all eternity. On the other hand: cartoon boobies. For extra fun, click on the link to render the site in Slovenian.
• Finally, there’s a free sketch on offer from Brian Carroll of Instant Classic; for two more days, Carroll will draw anything you want (within reason) as part of The Great Instant Classic Graphite Marathon 2009. If you take up Carroll on his generous offer, how about you kick him a little bit in the ol’ PayPal link to offset his materials and shipping costs? The trap, naturally, is that graphite smears if not handled carefully, and you could totally get black goo on your fingers.