Okay, not really. I just wanted to see if I could say that with a straight face. It’s the Friday before a short week (for those of us that go about the uncredibly serious bidniss o’ growin’ up in Ermerica), and I’ve still got a mess o’ work to do before I can call the day done. Let’s make this short.

• Free book: blog about Wondermark, fill out a form, maybe get one of ten copies of Clever Tricks To Stave Off Death (I already bought a copy, so I’m not filling out the form — integrity!). Alternately, use the form to enter your local library into contention for one of another ten free copies.
• Not-free book: Marooned‘s first book is now up for pre-order; if you’re not familiar with it (I wasn’t until very recently), it’s that most classic of stories: man gets stuck on Mars with robot; man and robot don’t really like each other, but learn to work together; killer robots show up to spoil everything. The art’s got a bit of Matt Groening, a bit of Scott C., and (call me crazy, but I swear it’s got) a bit of Curious George in the mix. The book is jam-packed with extras and goodies, and if that’s not enough for you, the first taste is free.
• Art! Amsterdam will be the home of a show by six American artists called Mish Mash KaBash! from 9 – 18 December; one of the six will be the mysterious fellow known as Sam Brown (credited in show materials as “Exploding Dog”). Unfortunately, all the show materials I can find are only available from the gallery as PDFs, but you can see them here. Any European readers who’d care to report on the show, please contact us.

In conjunction with the currently-running Monsters of Webcomics show at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, there will be a special event on Saturday (-day, -day, -day), 12 December, from 11:00am to 5:00pm. Think “One day webcomics convention and nerd-out” as guests of the museum meet local webcartoonists, pick up swag & sketches, and attend writing & drawing workshops throughout the day.

Featured guests include Brian Andersen, Leigh Dragoon, Karen Luk, Betsy Streeter, Jason Thompson, Chuck Whelon, and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (US Division, Women’s) Shaenon Garrity.

If you’re interested in participating (and can get to SF on your own), contact CAM supremo Andrew Farago, who runs the gallery at the museum which holds the cartoonart domain, which is a non-profit organization.

• Pre-orders for the lastest book from Evan Dahm (of Rice Boy and Order of Tales fame) are now up; Order of Tales, Book 2: The Hand of Stone will be shipping in 4 to 6 weeks, will run you US$25 ($35 in Canada) for 280 freakin’ pages, and look absolutely gorgeous. Hop to it, peoples.
• If I’ve got my sums correct (and the graphic on this page suggests that I do), Registered Weapon (once a cash register, now a robot, all cop) just hit 100 updates. Ordinarily, 100 updates is something I’d save for a slower news day, since it’s becoming somewhat ordinary to reach that milestone, but honestly I just needed an excuse to quote today’s RW Police Blotter:
  

  An employee of Buffalo Wild Wings called in a report that “two bears or something are straight-up [expletive] in the parking deck like it’s the [expletive] Bang Bus.”

  Two thoughts:

  1. That opening leads to a viciously funny dissection of the phenomenon of “Twilight Moms”
  2. If you know what Bang Bus is without looking it up, shame on you

  PS: Don’t Google it if you’re under 18 21 37 you know what? just don’t or at work.

Actually, compared to me, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are pretty young guys … but Penny Arcade turns eleven years old today, which is practically stretching back to the Cretaceous in terms of webcomics. They’ve had some pretty serious ups and downs in that time, although for a while now it’s been definitely on the sky-pointing trajectory. Congratulations to them for being the sorts that would push themselves further with each update, to give back to their community as much as they do, and for (dare I say it) respectable family men with wives and kids and every damn thing.

• After all that heart-warmness, let’s turn to the other coast and another old-timer; Jon Rosenberg¹ not only has his second big-publisher book up for pre-order, he’s got an update today that neatly encapsulates Objectivism in words and pictures. Plus, I have always wanted to type the words, Somehwere in the distant infinite depths of space and time, Ayn Rand is sporting a massive chubby.
• Events! For those of you down with tha’ GMT, may I commend you towards the Thought Bubble Festival, tomorrow through Sunday in Leeds? Looks like the comic-bookiest part will be on Saturday. And may I ask why it is that here in the states we don’t get comics events funded via lottery? If I gotta wait to buy my lunch at the deli because the registers are taken up with people dumping money into Powerball, I oughta at least see some cosplay as a result.

  Back on the left coast, mark your calendars for Legends of Webcomics, an open-studio party in Portland hosted by Meredith Gran and Latin Heartthrod Aaron Diaz with special guests Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, and Luke Mahan; there is gonna be so much sexy times going on in that studio even if Moen doesn’t bring Cockosaurus with her. Fun starts Saturday 5 Dec, 3 to 7 pm, in PDX.

• Here is where I’d normally throw in a spy-motif extended joke because I have new relating to Eben07, but I think I’ve used all the good ones up. So straight story it is as we note that Brain Food Comics (formed by the principals of, and to publish the collected comics pertaining to, The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs) have taken an interest in the espionage-themed webcomic. So that’s an in-house publisher grown out of the indy/webcomics scene, picking up another title; from such small beginnings develop massive successes, sometimes. Best of luck to Brain Food, and with any luck they’ll be crowding out staid titles from the comics shops, and achieve total market dominance in a decade or two.
• Von Allan’s The Road To God Knows … is getting a wider distribution. The exploration of mental illness (and the effects on not only those ill, but those around them) is being made available as a free PDF, a torrent, or at Scribd.com; the electronic versions are being distributed under Creative Commons Canada licence that grants readers the ability to distribute the online versions of the book for free. It’s also available in physical form via the usual online venues or in the better comics shops and bookstores. More info at Allan’s site.

_______________
¹ Obligatory disclosure: Jon started me out on this-here blog, and in fact owns my soul. I sold it to him for a dollar one night while drinking, and he carries it in his wallet to this day. Next to his butt, where it’s nice and cozy.

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I don’t want these to get lost in the shuffle so — lucky you! — it’s a weekend update at Fleen, as we review Scott Campbell and Leontine Greenberg‘s show Adrift, which runs at My Plastic Heart in New York for the next four weeks.

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So, the Friends of Lulu annual Lulu Awards got announced, and three webcomickers are among the honorees: Kate Beaton took the Kim Yale Award For Best New Talent, Danielle Corsetto is the Lulu of the Year, and Paul Taylor is now a Lu-Dude, as his Monica Villarreal was named Best Female Character. Congrautlations all ’round!

In other news (and I got a mountain of it backlogged right now):

• Although best known for Bellen!, Box Brown also does print comics work, and has a new blog about same. Very production-oriented, for those of you that like such things (I like such things).
• Last year it was Sean Tevis in Kansas, this year it’s Nicholas Ivan Ladendorf in Missouri that’s using webcomics to support a run for political office; key difference: Ladendorf was a webcartoonist prior to the run. Maybe. Let’s give him the floor for a moment:
  

  In the introduction of his campaign site, the candidate is wearing a mousekateer hat and his icon for discussing gun control is an AK47 on a leash with spiked collar. Even with this ‘edu-taining’ approach the candidate takes on some serious topics such as abortion and abolishing the federal reserve. Ladendorf is quick to point out “The site will continue to grow with the campaign. I have more to say and I’ll draw on this reservoir of additional issues as soon as the artist in me deems them presentable.”

  I’d love to tell you more about Ladendorf as a webcartoonist, but all I can say for certain right now is:

  • The “AK47” appears to actually be an M-16
  • The site is pretty sparse

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if you’re going to put a category header on your site, having one line of text that says “thus and such will go here someday when I get around to it” doesn’t cut it, especially if that section is labelled “Bio” and you’re running for political office. So if/when that section ever gets filled in, we’ll point you to Ladendorf-the-webcartoonist. Until then, this might be his artsite, but all the links appear to be dead so your guess is as good as mine.

• As Al Schroeder of Mindmistress surmises, I don’t really read superhero webcomics (the last one I read was the late, lamented Skirting Danger), so I was unaware that a half-dozen or so of them are engaged in a crossover that will change everything, redefine superheroics, etc. … everything the big Event Crossovers from Marvel and DC do, except this one will end without leading directly into the next, perpetually-recurring, everything-will-change-again crossover. Thus: CROSSOVERLORD, which has included some over-crossing to non-superhero webcomics here and there. Check it out at your leisure.
• Joshua Smeaton got a Xeric grant for Haunted, the spooktacular webcomic where it’s Halloween and you’re 12 again and the scares are a bit too real. The printed version (which is, of course the purpose of the Xerics) is now available for order through your friendly local comic shop or bookstore. $12.95, ISBN 978-0-615-31563-8, or order code NOV090896 in the November Previews catalog.

So there’s going to be webcomics-centric event at a comics store in Austin, Texas next month — they’re even flying in out-of-state guest, which is pretty dang cool. One caveat: although it’s called “Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Weekend”, it’s not associated with the New England Webcomics Weekend (™, dontcha know) that took place last March in Easthampton, Massachusetts (and will again in Fall ’10).

It will probably be no easier to keep exclusive use of the term “Webcomic[s] Weekend” than it is to hold onto “Comic[-]Con” — not that this is a bad thing, webcomics getting more popular and having events occur around them. Just understand, the original (and still the best) put on by Meredith Gran and Rich Stevens (with so much help from so many others) and held at Eastworks, will be the show arranged by the creators for the fans.

• Speaking of weeekends, this past one I was lucky enough to spend some time at a cocktail brunch presided over by my favorite barmen, with drinks shaken by the incomparable Dale DeGroff, in honor of the release of Lush Life, a new book of art and stories from the best bars and bartenders of the world, written and illustrated by Jill DeGroff. I’m bringing this up because as my wife and I were getting our copy signed, we were told that there were more than enough stories to fill a second book … and a third, and maybe a fourth. They’ll come later (instead of Lush Life being thicker) because of the need to keep production costs down.

  Bam. Self-publishing. In our very brief interaction before, I’d liked Jill DeGroff, but now I really liked her — getting the material, doing the layout, raising the capital, and printing that sucker up for herself is something I’ve seen many webcomickers do, and it always impresses the hell out of me. DeGroff isn’t a webcomics artist, but as we’ve previously established, the difference between a webcomics artist and any independent comics artist (or, for that matter, any independent artist, period) is essentially nil.

  We got to talking art and comics and she asked me who I liked. The first three names that came to my mind were Gran, Engström, and Beaton, which prompted The King Of All Cosmos Cocktails to remark, “I’ve heard of Kate Beaton” and start scribbling her URL for future reference. (Hey, Kate — the greatest drinks mixer in the world is in all likelihood chuckling mightily as he peruses your archives right now.)

  Anyway, if you find yourself in a bar, and a well-dressed lady appears to be intently sketching you (as I saw she was doing to me), tarry a while and have a good story at the ready — you may find yourself in a future edition. And even if you don’t, pick up a copy of Lush Life, as there’s some damn gorgeous work in there.

• Speaking of Kate Beaton (as if I don’t enough already — but I’ll stop speaking of her when she stops doing such incredibly good work), Dirk Deppey managed to combine her with a reference to one of my other favorite topics on this page, Frank Zappa. I don’t think that I’ve ever quite managed to work those two into one item, but the piece at ¡Journalista! is even better than anything I could have come up with, for two reasons:
  1. It combines one of my favorite Beaton things (doing squats on the North Pole) and one of my favorite Zappa things (the concept of eyebrows); the only way this could have been better is if it involved dudes and swords
  2. Deppey included a succinct and insightful analysis as to why this particular strip is so well put together; seriously, read the strip and read what he has to say — it’s like he put into words all the things that were running around in my subconscious

  Read, enjoy, and when in doubt, do some squats.

Via Mighty God King. Just because it’s the greatest non sequitur since Moustache, that’s why.

• More things happening next weekend, this time north of the border in Montréal, as Least I Could Do and Looking For Group bossguy Ryan Sohmer opens up his very own comic book store. Okay, The 4th Wall (should that be Le Quatrième Mur?) has been open for a few weeks now, and Shopkeep Sohmer now has enough of a handle on things to throw the Grand Opening (ouverture grande) on the 14th of November (le 14ème novembre). It’s listed on the Facebook event page as Party – Erotic Party, which just sorta makes the kind of sense that isn’t. Anyhoo, 940 St Jean in Pointe-Claire, out by the airport.
• Also on the calendar, not webcomics per se, but likley of interest to anybody that does them — the Cartoon Art Museum is presenting a talk & signing around a new book that chronicles the creation of the first animated Christmas special, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol:
  

  Mr. Magoo and Charles Dickens may have seemed like an odd match at the time but Americans of a certain age will remember that the pairing resulted in bit of pure magic. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first-ever animated Christmas special, and is now the subject of a splendid new book by Darrell Van Citters.

  With a sterling cast, whimsical animation and Broadway-caliber score all wrapped around Dickens’ timeless tale, Magoo became a fixture of the holiday season in the 1960s, but today is all but forgotten.

  I guess that means that I’m “of a certain age”, since I haven’t forgotten it. I’ll wager that more than one person significantly younger than me also remembers Razzleberry Dressing, right? Right?

  Dang. I’m old. If you’re old (or just want to get in touch with a bit of prime early-60s weirdness, which probably subconsciously influenced a webcomicker or two), Darrell Van Citters will be speaking at the museum on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 from 7:30 to 9:00pm, signing to follow.

• Okay, so I’m old (not to unduly alarm anybody, but I’ll be turning 42 in three weeks), but one thing I’m not is balding. That’s why you should be aware that I am definitely not featured in this. Pretty damn funny (thought possibly NSFW, depending on where you W) and depressingly accurate; you should see the PR stuff that I get and don’t run. Anybody sees Josh Lesnick around, give him a high-five for me.
• Finally, heads up for everybody who likes things that rule: The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham & Eggs has made the transition from webcomic to paper issues, and now its first trade reprint book is up for pre-order. As is often the case, creators Lauren Monardo and Stephen Lindsay are self-publishing, and so need as many pre-orders as possible so they can afford to print the damn thing. Head on over, check out the previews and guest strips, and support ’em if you like ’em. Hint: You’re going to like ’em.

No reason, just felt like getting that out there.

• For those of you that keep track of such things, Child’s Play gears up for another year (that woud be the seventh) of giving and good deeds. Last year’s giving (coming on the heels of the global economic meltdown’s start) was $1,434,377 (US). Let’s see if this year (coming at the end of a full year-plus of global economic crapitude) we can do as well. There’s already more than half a dozen IRL and virtual events for the cause, and more on the way.
• The last one was a success, so the fine (for certain values of “fine) people (for certain values of “people”) at TopatoCo are bringing out Open House/Sales Event Mark II.0 a week from Saturday (that would be November 14th), from noon to 6:00pm local time (that would be Eastern Standard). This time they’ve added that Awkward Stare-Fest aspect to the event, and I will pay one dollar American Cash Money to the first person that stares at any TopatoCoian enough that it becomes awkward for all involved. But for your own safety, I advise you keep such tactics to the cartoonists and not to TopatoCo VP Holly Post — rumor has it she bites when provoked.
• It’s a good day in webcomicdom when something completely unexpected hits my frontal lobes. When it happens twice (at opposite ends of the day’s trawl list), it’s extra good with creamy nougat in the center. In case you hadn’t seen it, Achewood gets the Tony Millionaire treatment (lacking only the magic words, Dook Dook Dook) and XKCD borrows a page from Edward Tufte (lacking only sufficient resolution on most monitors; click here to embiggen). Oh, and before any of you start the righteous nerdfury about Elrond meeting the Fellowship after the departure from Rivendell, please note that the comic clearly states it’s for the movie version. Thank you.
• Continuing a tradition that goes back to Garry Trudeau‘s pioneering work (started in the late 70s), Chris Yates engages in a little investigative cartooning today. Lest you think that the scandal he’s unearthed is invented for the sake of a gag, allow me to point you empirical proof: The Survey Is A Lie. He will get to the truth!

Are you the one person that didn’t know that Octopus Pie updated last night? If so, my good deed for the day is done. Read, enjoy, and for the sake of all that’s good and holy, avoid unicyclists.

• What the hell, England? Jorge Cham, Doctor of Engineering and well-known world-wide lecturer to graduate students, comes to your fair shores on a speaking tour and you detain him at the border because he’s not a “real doctor”, and thus sentence him to deportation? The first comic went up the day he was due to begin speaking in England, and the story isn’t done yet … but seriously?
• On the non-sucking side of England, there is a new Freakangels trade in my hands after yesterday’s trip to the comics shop — the third of the series, released pretty much like clockwork, and appearing mere weeks after the last page of the book updated online. Okay, granted, Warren Ellis has a publisher taking care of many of the fiddly little bits inherent in publishing, but damn — that’s impressive. Twenty-four (mostly weekly) six-page updates and call it a book. My hat’s off to you, angry drunken sir.
• Reminder: just over two weeks until the Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place in Plano, TX. Taking a cue from New England Webcomics Weekend back in March, Texas-area webcomickers will be getting together and seeing what kind of fun they can have. Speaking of NEWW, it will be returning in 2010, but sources say it will be moving from the very busy Spring con season to Fall. More on exact dates when that information is available.
• Episode 12, and the end of the first “season” of SMASH by Chris and Kyle Bolton, released this week. Know what I call that? A good opportunity to either get all caught up or to read a big chunk of story (just shy of 150 pages worth) before the new season starts. You play end-of-season catch-up all the time with Mad Men or Breaking Bad; just this time it’s got a 10 year old superkid and not morally bankrupt early-60s ad execs or meth-cooking high school chemistry teachers.
• Speaking of milestones, here’s one that’s worth mentioning. Webcomicker get to draw whatever they need to into their scenes, and that makes the most fantastical vistas possible. Slightly more difficult are photo comics, where you have to stage the scenes (or write around your latest random snapshots). Even more difficult would be photo comics where you have to build the settings and scenes, but what about where you had to construct the mise en scène not out of interchangeable components, but from traditional handicrafts? Ladies and gentlemen, Amu’s World:
  

  Amu’s World has reached its first year of updates [28 October]. It’s a photo-based comic featuring hand-crocheted amigurumi characters created by my wife. I know a year isn’t a particularly long time for a webcomic, especially a weekly, but I’m very proud do have never missed an update or been late with a comic.

  Also, we’re celebrating our first year with a Fan Art contest. The prize is a hand-crocheted Amu’s World amigurumi doll and a large print of one of my photos I post every Friday. The winner chooses which one they get.

  Let’s be clear — if creator B. Casimir Slaski wants to do a comic with a ninja, the Prince of All Cosmos, or a villainous gang of bunnies with eyepatches, he first has to convince his wife to craft such a thing. It kind of limits how much he can wake up at 3:00 am with a brilliant — brilliant, I tell you!! — idea to take the strip in a new, exciting, hilarious direction because the lead time on a crochet Yog-Sothoth (is it weird that’s the first thing that popped into my head?) is probably pretty long. For creating under such constraints, we at Fleen salute Amu’s World.

Holy crap, look at what the Amadora Festival has done for T-Xers Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart — whole galleries decked out in their signature styles. Along with Ramón Pérez, the three continue to take Europe (in today’s case, Portugal) by storm, unleashing a festival-only book that must be mine. Please explain to me why I’m in rainy New York instead of sunny Portugal?

• Holy crap, check out the gallery show that Eric Monster Millikin‘s got opening tomorrow night. Between Giger, Manson, and Millikin (who looks positively cheery compared to his fellow exhibitors), somebody is gonna have nightmares after viewing The Damned II at Tangent Gallery in Detroit.
• Holy crap, this is some beautiful work. One Nate Simpson [edit to fix link; thanks Matt from the comments!] has written that he’s taking a year off from making art for video games and to take a whack at producing comics. Doesn’t look like he intends for the web to be his primary vehicle for distribution, but as long has he’s channeling a cross between Moebius and Final Fantasy X, I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get.
• Speaking of beautiful work, have you seen the brand new (like, two-pages-new) serialized-to-the-web graphic novel Spain & Morocco? Holy crap, that looks like it took some time draw. There’s a bit of Eric Drooker in the color palette, methinks, and a bit of Sin Titulo in the character designs, and Sin Titulo’s by Cameron Stewart who’s going to be passing through Spain on the way to France, so it all ties back to the beginning.

  In conclusion: Holy crap, I love comics via internet.