But many things to report on today. Please, enjoy.

• I attended the New Jersey Webcomic Chaos meetup on Saturday, where I got the skinny on the debut book from Glass Urchin creator Auilix; the cover looks great, it’ll be 150 pages (!) in manga digest trim size, and it’ll debut at SPX at what appears to be a very reasonable price point. Be sure to check it out if you make it to Bethesda next month. Side note about the NJWC deal: it appears now to be empirically true that at no time can more than two webcomickers congregate over beverages, but that the conversation will at some point turn to Brad Guigar. He is the glue that binds us together.
• Also over the weekend, news of Team Raina and Dave runninng a workshop at a book camp sponsored by the world-famous Symphony Space. The lucky campers were the first to see the galleys of Raina’s SMILE, making me extremely envious of a bunch of ‘tweens on account of I won’t get to read it for nearly six months.
• Just this morning came word that Commissioner James Gordon is goin’ to the semifinals for the Cutest Dog Competition. Well done, webcomic-loving masses, that’s $500 towards the wedding of Gordon’s people, Chris and Carly; now hang on while the remaining 10 semifinalists get worked out, and we’ll be sure to let you know when to vote Gordon to the finals (only four of twelve dogs will make it to the final round, and the $1,000,000 grand prize waiting the winner). The level of competition will be fierce, and we’ll need all of us working together to do our parts.
• Wanna see something interesting? Check out Google‘s new Labs feature, Google Squared. Now punch in the term webcomics. I’d love to see the algorithms to see how these particular items came to be reported.

So many things have happened since I spoke with you last. Let’s hit the highlights, shall we?

The Hugo Awards got awarded last night in Montreal, and two of webcomicdom’s finest were up for (I believe the first ever) award for Best Graphic Story: Phil and Kaja Foglio for Girl Genius (specifically book 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, starting online here), and Howard Tayler for Schlock Mercenary (specifically, The Body Politic story arc, starting online here). The Foglios won, and Fleen congratulates them; unfortunately that means Tayler lost, and we at Fleen extend our sympathies along with the comfort that at least he lost to some wonderful people with terrific work.

• New England Webcomics Weekend (definitely returning to *hampton, MA in 2010) appears to have spawned a movement: the Dallas area will be home to a webcomickers gathering on Saturday, 14 November. The Dallas Webcomics Expo has a site up, but I’m not sure who’s organizing; a request for information has been sent, and all will be shared at the soonest of times.
• Have you seen this? Wonderella bobblehead on pre-order! The only thing this needs is a voice chip that says Rim me, Sasquatch and you have the perfect desktop accessory or stocking stuffer for children of all ages!¹
• Finally, Commissioner James Gordon needs your help. See, if he’s found to be the cutest dog (and look how cute he is!) in I dunno, America or the internet or whatever, his parents (Chris Hastings and Carly Monardo) will be able to defray the costs of their wedding by a considerable amount … and, I’m told, throw a hell of a party for all of you. So vote already, so he can get back to the important work of fighting crimes.

  PS: for those wondering my own dog is not in the contest, it’s because large dogs never win these things, even though Grace is the cutest dog in the world. Yes she is! Yes she is!.

_______________
¹ Do not actually give this to a child; you will scar them for life.

I hope that Dave Kellett‘s got a good bouncer on for the latest Sheldon launch this weekend, or the celebutantes and MTV refugees will be swarming out of the woodwork for anything that resembles a free drink and attention. If you go and you see Paris, tell her to freakin’ eat something, already.

• Speaking of celebrations, couple of round numbers to note: 1000, 2000, and 2500 strips were each recently passed by (respectively) Theater Hopper, Least I Could Do, and Goats (no celebratory strip, so I chose a recent one at random).
• New schedules abound! Well, one new schedule at least:
  

  Hello With Cheese just got 500% Cheesier!

  After starting as a Monday-only strip in January, Hello With Cheese is changing to a 5-days-a-week comic, starting this week. Enjoy the cheesiness!

  My inner math geek compels me to point out that for HWC to get 500% cheesier, it would have to go from one update a week (100% cheesy) to a schedule with 500% more cheese, or six updates a week, so really it’s only a 400% cheesiness increase. My inner everything-except-math-geek compels me to apologize for the math pedantry. In any event, please enjoy a webcomic with hitherto-unknown levels of cheesiness, such that the Kraft people are expressing interest and alarm.

• Let’s wrap on something uplifting, shall we? J. Baird of the Create a Comic Project (oft-featured in these pages) sends word of an article about CCP’s panel at the recently-concluded Otakon, as well as an eyewitness blogpost from said ‘kon (warning: cosplay).

For those keeping track of such things, there’s still a stack of books from the recent comics gathering that I got and haven’t read yet. Capsule reviews: Dr McNinja 3 and Girl Genius 8 are both shining exemplars of how to bring a payoff to every thrice-weekly page, while still having an overall story develop. Since I’m mentioning Girl Genius, word from Phil Foglio is that the recently-finished-catching-up-online Buck Godot epic, Gallimaufry, will see print in January. Hooray!

• If you’ve ever looked at the list of websites over there to the right, you may have noticed waaaay down at the bottom is one that hasn’t seen updates in a long time; Owen Dunne’s You Damn Kid updated for a long time, released a book (via Keenspot’s imprint), got optioned by Fox TV, went on hiatus, came back, went on hiatus, launched a bunch of other comics, went on hiatus for a long damn time, came back with a live-action video series this past February, and managed a pair of updates before reverting to hiatus.

  Please don’t misunderstand me — I labor under no illusion that Owen Dunne is my bitch, and I don’t mean to bring up the irregularity of his comickry as a means of criticism. Life gets in the way, and through all the interruptions, YDK has retained its place on the links because I really like Dunne’s work and consider myself essentially infinitely patient waiting for the next iteration which begins today:

  [Y]ou get paid and hate your job, I make squat but I like to do this. And that place where we meet in the middle is The Happy Monday Place. Or something like that. So welcome, and I hope you make it a regular stop each week.

  So here’s how it will work. A new page every Monday, with new comics, a short installment of the Barnyard Pete Show, and a monthly edition of Banion — The Podcast. The individual pages will be archived, not the individual comics. (However, the old YDK comics are archived, just click on the text at the top right of the comic.)

  Catch that? The Barnyard Pete live-action shorts will now be in Flash (much faster to produce), and Banion (clueless but serious detective in the Joe Friday tradition with his own webcomic) will now be podcast as an old-style radio drama. Looks like my theory about webcomics being a breeding ground for other forms of creativity wasn’t too far off. Speaking solely for myself, Dunne had me at an all new Nippleshine Manor! Welcome back to the game, Mr Dunne — should a hiatus come up again, I’ll be waiting for your return.

• Know who else we haven’t heard from in a while? Nicholas Gurewitch. Know who’s trying to remedy that? Andrew Farago:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum’s Monsters of Webcomics exhibition is so big that it needs TWO opening receptions with special guest Nick Gurewitch, creator of the popular webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship.

  On Thursday, August 27, Gurewitch will meet fans and sign copies of the two bestselling Perry Bible Fellowship collections, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack. The booksigning is free and open to the public.

  On Friday, August 28, Gurewitch guides Perry Bible Fellowship fans through an artistic thesis about visual storytelling, and will go behind the scenes of comic-production with co-writer/spiritual advisor Evan Keogh. Special guest Michael Capozzola (stand-up comedian and creator of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Surveillance Caricatures) will lead a Q&A with Gurewitch immediately following the presentation. This is a ticketed event. General admission for this presentation is $10, or $5 for members of the Cartoon Art Museum.

  Those of you in the San Francisco area at the end of the month, take notes and report back to us.

In today’s breaking news, Legend of Bill creator Dave Reddick has joined (n the past hour or so) Blank Label Comics. For those not familiar with Reddick’s work, he assists Jim Davis on his strip about a large cat (dunno, don’t think that’s going anywhere), as well as working on various Star Trek-themed strips for Gene Roddenberry’s production company, a single-panel webcomic, and the aformentioned Aragonesque barbarian epic. Look for Legend of Bill to show up on the BLC front page shortly (and maybe at the same time, the code’ll get fixed so that Shortpacked! shows up again (unless … there’s something they’re not telling David Willis? Could this be a Dave-for-Dave swapout?).

Our main story today is what’s likely the last reminiscence of San Diego Aught-Nine: the AfterCon party on Saturday night, hosted by the Cyanide & Happiness gents, Zach Weiner‘s new sketch-comdey undertaking, and the superstars of nerdcore.

I’ll confess something here — I never really got it when a stand-up comedian included lengthy stints opening for music acts. Okay, maybe Sinatra I can see, but the number of people that’ve opened for high-energy, heavily-amplified, passionate-fanbase artists? I just always figured they enjoyed being told “You suck!” and “Gedoff the stage, we want ____ !” Turns out? Not so much.

The audience at The Casbah last Saturday was The Nerdcore Tribe — having missed much of the hip-hop revolution on generational grounds and having an untrained ear that’s not good at catching the verbal dance that characterizes your quality rappers (not that this is unique circumstance with me; I once had a really enlightening half-hour chat with Harvey Pekar about how to train my ear to really get jazz … he called me “man” and “cat”, of which I am very proud), I didn’t catch much of the lingual dexterity exhibited by YTCracker and MC Lars — but there ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes. The crowd was into it, completely absorbed, singing along and on ready to devolve into the joyous riot (no harm, no foul, lots of bumps and bruises) you get on the dance floor when the beat takes you over. If anybody would resent an interruption of their vibe for electronic funnybook cartoons and movies, it was them.

But funny is funny. Catching a short of the oh my God that’s horrible and funny I’m going to hell but I’ll be laughing all the way variety (such as The Sign or I Love Noodles), it doesn’t matter if it’s what you came to see or not. You’re into it. And longer pieces, with Weiner’s troupe of pranksters (including James Ashby, one of his collaborators on Snowflakes) work just as well when they’re as funny as Gateway Drug, LOL CAT, or the as-yet-not-online Ultimate Staring Contest. Even a projector failure (which must have made already-nervous hosts even nervouser … don’t worry guys, you broke every leg out there) couldn’t put a damper on the enthusiasm.

Lessons learned — I’m not too old to stand in a one-room small venue, beer in hand, listening to rappers. I do in fact know all the words to MC Frontalot‘s Livin’ At The Corner of Dude & Catastrophe and Diseases of Yore. The sense of humor that lets a creator sustain a webcomic is (for the right people) transferrable to other media and forms of expression. Beer bought for you by Zach Weiner is always extra-tasty. Many thanks to all the people who put together the show, so graciously invited me, and to the parents who worked so hard making the costumes.

Well, there’s another San Diego Comic-Con come and gone … some planned things didn’t happen as I wished, some unplanned things popped themselves up, and a whole lotta people came and went. Let’s do our last wrap up (and there may not be a posting as such tomorrow, seeing as how I haven’t really read any webcomics since last Tuesday, but you’re still up a couple posts so that’s all right).

• Continuing on from yesterday’s rushed-for-press-time missive, I got a chance to head over to the IDW booth and ask about the Bat Boy thing. I spoke with Chris Ryall, publisher and editor-in-chief, who described himself as a big fan of the Peter Bagge/Danielle Corsetto Bat Boy strip that ran in the late, lamented Weekly World News (a fan to the extent that Ryall had purchased two of Bagge’s originals the week before). Ryall said that he wanted to shift the pretty whimsical strip (where, among other things, Bat Boy was President of the United States) into a more traditional comic book type universe.

  But, and this is the important part, Ryall wants more people to see the original strips, and wants to run them as a backup feature — he’d been talking with Bagge about this but hadn’t obtained Corsetto’s contact information, which I was happy to supply. Danielle, if you don’t hear from him after the Con rush settles, drop me an email and I’ll make sure you crazy kids get your heads together.

• Changes at Keenspot are in the air. Rumors were travelling the show floor that John Troutman had either precipitously left, or been asked to leave, Keenspot; the circumstances described in the stories varied, but agreed that it came down to an It’s personal situation. We at Fleen haven’t had a chance to speak with Troutman directly for his side of the story (and will endeavour to do so), but when contacted for comment Keenspot CEO Chris Crosby provided the following:
  

  John Troutman’s Keenspot membership has been terminated, but we have no comment on the matter otherwise and wish John the best of luck.

  Take that as you will; as of this writing, Troutman’s Flat Feet and High Heels is still linked on the main Keen page, and in fact was highlighted in the spotlight position at the top of the page when I browsed there a moment ago. I was unable to make it to the Keenspot panel yesterday, so I don’t know if the Troutman issue was brought up; when asked prior to the panel if there were any big announcements planned, Keenspot’s Bobby Crosby hinted at the possibility of more Hollywood deals but wouldn’t make any definitive declarations. Anybody with first-hand reports of the panel is invited to chime in below; please don’t bring any Well, I heard from my friend that he heard from a guy at a booth that he heard from a passing cosplayer … “facts”.

• Paul Taylor’s sculptors brought some stock of the one-run-only Monica statue over to the Blank Label booth. It’s a lovely piece of work, Taylor was clearly thrilled with the outcome (and I’m sure he’d love to have a Shelly sculpture to go with it, so make with the pre-orders). The other person impressed: David Willis, who’s decided to do his own Shortpacked figure(s) with Patch Together. First up: Amber. Question I forgot to ask: corset version or non-corset version?
• The Zudapanel kicked off yesterday with a bang — it was standing-room only (with a posted capacity of 403), and the panelists were taking questions both from the floor and via Twitter (cool idea, but a little wonky in practice — Ron Perazza (director VP of Creative Services at DC … unless his title’s changed in which case let me know, Ron thanks, Laura!) told me afterwards that trying to keep up with the conversation/questions on the handheld while also speaking/paying attention to the conversation was more awkward than anticipated. I missed the first half and the explanations of how the panel would run, which means there was only about 15 minutes left before I was really up to speed as to the mechanics of the session, and I’m not able to fairly comment on the whole thing.

  I’ll say this — that portion of the panel that I did see didn’t really change my mind about Zuda and its operations; I think that the service is a corporate version of an independent production model, and philosophically I prefer the indy approach. It’s not that Perazza, or Kwanza Johnson, or David Gallaher, or any of the other people I’ve met from the Zudaworld are bad or wrong people — as I’ve written before, they’ve been unfailingly polite to me in all our dealings, especially given the skeptical approach I’ve taken to their production model. It comes down to the fact that we have different mental definitions of the word webcomics.

  This is not a problem unique to this discussion — any time I’m contacted by somebody wanting a quote, a primer, or an interview about webcomics, the first thing I have to do is try to come up with a working definition of “webcomics”, and I’ve had a hell of a time developing one that’s both consistent and practical. Hell, last night David Malki ! told me that he hates the word (and even the word comics) so much that we should stop using it. His suggestion: Electric Joy. I think that if we were to come up with a new word, we need to find one that doesn’t invoke mental images of AC-to-DC power supplies and safe words, but hey — that’s just me.

  But getting back to the point, I think we need to have a broader discussion one of these years on the relative merits of the independent model (the creator must really do all the ancillary jobs) vs the syndicate model (all that grunt work done for you, but at a significant cost in rights, and the web is viewed fundamentally as a place to content locked away) vs the Zudamodel (embracing the web, but still functioning as a publisher). For now, you can decide for yourself — the entire discussion was recorded for podcast (which should be over here sometime today), and the Twitter conversation is right there at hashtag #makecomics (Perazza and the other panelists were going to continue to answer questions via Twitter after the session ended, so there’s quite a lot there).

Up today: the long haul that starts at the airport. On the other hand, I managed to get everything packed up, so no box o’ books to ship home, hooray.

Photos: Some catching up to do, so these go back a couple of days. On the floor one might have seen the coolest mobility scooter ever, the saddest clown in the world, and the awesomest fan gift in history (I’m told the guy who made that little clank is approaching retirement and will thus have lots more time to play in his metal shop … I shudder to think what he’ll come up with next; I mean, I like Phil a lot, he’s a terrific guy, but I don’t want him to have a death ray or anything).

Lots of Venture Bros cosplay, with Dr Mrs The Monarch being popular this year (saw another with an absolutely perfect costume, but as casually walking by the booth she was in prompted her to try very hard to sell me a calendar of cosplay fetish photos, I opted against snapping a pic and for moving along as politely as possible; for reference, showing me a photo of a zombified naughty schoolgirl in a total of 18 square inches of fabric and exclaiming, And this is my little sister! is a tad bit creepy). Also slightly disturbing, the pair of cosplayers who appeared to be a couple that were dressed (just about perfectly, I might add) as Dr Orpheus and his daughter Triana (pictured here with the life model for Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose … somebody ask Chris Sims to analyze that one, ’cause I ain’t going near it).

For reference, the Dumbrella Hobo Party booth accepted foodstuffs in exchange for goods (the guy that brought these obtained stickers). Also: orphans, but making change was really messy. We weren’t able to get Iron Chef Sakai to do anything with the beans, but we tried. And there was some adorable animation at Top Chef, as Owly and Wormy went looking for lunch.

That’s it. See you next year.

Here we roll into the end stages of SDCC. Didn’t get to see all the stuff I wanted to, unexpected stories presented themselves, and much happened. Let’s start at the top, shall we?

• The syndicated strip cartoonists held a Q&A yesterday; Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Richard Thompson (Cul De Sac) and Keith Knight (Knight Life) engaged in what amounted to a running discussion on the the topic of As newspapers go, we go, unless we figure out something fast. We want your questions because we need to figure out some answers. Today.

  After that brief introduction by Pastis, the very first question was on webcomics (and didn’t come from me). Paraphrasing (since it came a little too fast to transcribe): Where do you stand on webcomics, with a model where you give the comic away and sell goods to make money? Knight replied with a variation on an answer he’s given a couple of times this week: You need to get your work out to as many people, by as many channels as possible, and it only makes sense for anybody in print syndication to look at this approach. But he doesn’t believe in being exclusively self-published on the web, and he doesn’t believe in being exclusively syndicated (and has different projects that follow different models). Money quote (and this one is exact): I learn as much from webcartoonists as I do from [gesturing to fellow panelists] these guys.

  Good answer, but the question didn’t directly address an issue I’d like to have seen brought up, viz., what benefit does a syndicate actually provide these days? One may not believe that papers will entirely go away (as does Pastis), and that the physicality of the actual object is something people will want (Pastis again), even while negotiating rights to new channels like the Kindle (Pastis once more) while pondering the question, “Does this add to my audience or take away?”

  Mostly though, they saw the problem as one of scarcity of space — asked about legacy strips (repeating the question for the room, Pastis phrased it as How do you feel about all the dead wood on the comics page?), the panel figured they could live with them if there were sufficient room for new strips as well. But below that is a sense of almost visceral dislike of strips that continue long past their original creators. Pastis wondered if there’s another creative form that’s perceived as so transferrable that the creator could die and the kid could continue it and it’s considered just the same.

  But at least that problem might not exist in the future — as Pastis and Knight pointed out, for about ten years now, most syndicate contracts and left the copyright with the creator (although the monetary terms are such that while the creator own the strip, the syndicate gets a significant cut). Case in point: books. Why don’t many syndicated strippers have books out? Pastis noted that there’s essentially one publisher of such (Andrews & McMeel), but not every strip cartoonist tries to get books made.

  With the avenues of self-publishing, there’s no reason not to have them, although if, say, Thompson were to decide to publish books because the syndicate didn’t want to, they’d still get about 50% of the revenue per their contracts. But Knight did point out that when a particular publisher produced books for him, he got $1 per book sold, and now that he self-publishes, he gets $11 per (this is on rights that were recovered by Knight, so he doesn’t have to share, but still — it might be almost worthwhile as a revenue stream, seeing as how the number of papers carrying strips is dropping).

• I bumped into two of the most generous people in all of comicdom — Jennifer Babcock and Matt Murray had previously been associated with the running of the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art and the annual MoCCA Art Fest, but they and others struck out last Fall to form a new nonprofit devoted to comics scholarship. Turns out what’s normally a tricky undertaking is even trickier in the midst of a worldwide economic contraction, but they’re still plugging away at it, and were very sympathetic towards the current MoCCA folks about the logistical … let’s call them challenges … at this year’s show. There’s a steep learning curve and Murray and Babcock sincerely hoped the current showrunners are able to negotiate it. Like I said, generous; if you don’t do so already, check out their undertakings with the Sequential Art Collective.
• What would happen if the guys behind Halfpixel, Webcomics Weekly, and webcomics.com held a panel and didn’t give any soundbites? Unlike some of their previous appearances which were explicitly pitched as Webcomics Weekly live performances, this session (entitled Webcomics Bootcamp) was a fairly organic conversation, with answers not neatly encapsulated down into short, pithy, ten words answers. Find a recording somewhere (we’ll link to any we come across) and listen to the whole thing — you’ll only miss out on the visuals where Scott Kurtz spilled water on the table and what looked like a large dog laughed at him from the back of the room.
  Sidenote: dissatisfied that only four people got to ask questions before time was up, Kurtz, Brad Guigar, and Robert Khoo held an impromptu Q&A session on webcomics business at the Marriott at 11:00pm; anybody that made it there, please send us a summary.

It’s time to wrap this — I still have to write up the SMBC/Cyanide & Happiness/nerdcore show, the story of how I spoke with the publisher/editor-in-chief of IDW about the Bay Boy comics (pretty good outcome on that one I think) and some changes at Keenspot, not to mention news on new webcomics statues, and photos. If I don’t get to all that before tomorrow, deal. In the meantime, the Keenspot panel’s at 11:00 (32AB) and the Zuda version of how-to-do-webcomics panel at 3:00 (4). Hope to make both of those, but I’ve got some other appointments.

Oh yeah — this is why. On those occasions that I meet somebody that reads this blog, it never fails to give me a little thrill to know that I’m not just sending electrons into the aether. Your kind words buoy me in times like now, when my liver and consciousness have reached their limits in service to webcomics, and I have to take an early night or both will be irretrievably shredded. On the up side, it means that somebody will be alive at the Dumbrella booth (which will please the new boss — details below), and there’s plenty to talk about even with me having missed the evening’s social niceties.

I didn’t manage to make it to the Miyazaki panel or the Kibuishi panel, but I did get to have lunch with The Rockin’ Teenage Combo, aka Becky ‘n’ Frank. We had some disturbingly good breakfast, spoke about how hard it is to make comics or pursue an animation career from New Zealand (beautiful place and absolute tops on my gotta-visit list, but so remote from the rest of your industry), and saw the most clever bit of experiential marketing at the Con so far — the people behind a forthcoming movie called LEGION (don’t know anything about it, but now I kind of want to) appropriated an ice-cream truck, dressed the driver & attendant as zombies, and drove around the Gaslamp hanging out the windows looking suitably dead and chucking t-shirts at unsuspecting passers-by.

On the way back in to the scrum, I had the pleasure of seeing Becky & Frank interact with the likes of Jeff Smith, Steve Hamaker, Scott Campbell, Kibuishi, and others — I never get tired of seeing artists who admire each others work interact. I snagged quick copies of Flight 6 and Owly 5 (and watched the Owly cartoon clip loop on the TV — purely adorable), and was back to the grind.

The rushes came and went, the booth crew were troupers, and organizational changes made. What began as an over-booze discussion about number trending has become an expansion of Dumbrella. Andy Bell’s wife, Jackie MacLeod, works for humanitarian non-profits in a logistical capacity, work which has taken her as far as Congo, trying to get food and medical aid to those in war zones (braving rebels, corrupt governmental officials, malaria, and baboons to do so). Jackie is a tiny person, so to deal with crap of the magnitude she must regularly deal with, you know that she has an enormous capacity to Get Shit Done. By popular acclaim (and fear of reprisals — a woman who can stare down armed insurgent baboons while dealing with a case of malaria is not somebody you want annoyed with you), she will now be known as Madame El Presidente For Life of Dumbrella. ¡Viva!

Getting serious for a moment, there’s a valuable lesson here, one that echoes a conversation I had with Robert Khoo a couple of San Diegos ago: the difference between Penny Arcade and various webcomics collectives is that at PA, there’s one person that makes a decision, and things happen. When there’s multiple people sharing the decisions inherent in prepping months for a shared week-long marketing experience — or in some collectives, having a tighter organization, complete with shared revenues — things will inevitably bog down.

Want an exercise in frustration? Try to get three or more people to agree what to put on a pizza. Now try to get five or more to agree what to put on a pizza that will determine a nontrivial portion of their year’s income. If there can be a level of trust in the skills and fairness of one person to make a decision and just go with it, things can happen, and with less potential for hurt feelings. Thus, Jackie, whose experience in war zones should just about prepare her for the job of dealing with the level of poo-flinging that is found in webcomickers. And there will be a bit more poo flung, as Dumbrella has expanded by two — de facto Dumbrellites Meredith Gran and Chris Yates are now de juris members in (good?) standing.

In other news:

• Webcomics guest star Wil Wheaton and I discussed the most effective techniques of being a grumpy old guy telling kids to stay the hell of our respective lawns — he favors the cane to gesture with, I’m going with chucking the pears that fall of my pear tree at the little whippersnappers. We agree that releasing the hounds is something you have to hold in reserve, but I’ve just thought of another issue … when do we get the garden hose?
• Fleen offers condolences to David Malki ! on not taking the Eisner award for humor, particularly after hearing him do a run-through on semi-prepared remarks in the event of a win.
• IDW will be visited today in an attempt to find out what the hell is up with the announcement that they will be doing a 4 issue comic miniseries on the topic of Bat Boy. A 4 issues comic miniseries that apparently does not involve Danielle Corsetto, who did the Adventures of Bat Boy comics for the Weekly World News after Peter Bagge originated it. What the hell, IDW?
• Andrew Farago at the Cartoon Art Musuem tells me there’s still slots open for the virtual gallery portion of Monsters of Webcomics. Short form: three strips at 72dpi, to fit on a 1680 x 1050 monitor. It’ll be a slideshow, so no scrolling. Include your name, webcomic title, URL, and keep in mind there’ll be kids so stick to PG-13 (and tamer) material. Submit by 31 July to andrewfarago who may be found at the Google-run e-mail service (dot-com). Also, they need a logo, so if you want to design something that’s truly metal, have at it.
• If you’re in San Diego, drop by the 1200 aisle and see Randy Milholland. Ask him about the sketch he did that’s Berry, Berry Disturbing. I’d tell you, but it’s both a) extraordinarily rude and b) not my joke to tell. I’m in awe of what comes out of his head.

No photos. Up today: the aforementioned IDW visit, the panel on syndication (morbid curiousity really — noon in room 7AB), the Halfpixel panel (2:00 in room 8) and hopefully the Hope Larson panel (4:00 in room 3). Speaking of Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O’ Malley was grateful when I spoke to him that he and Scott McCloud did their panel and the questions were actually about Scott Pilgrim the comics, and not Scott Pilgrim the it-won’t-be-out-for-another-year movie. Well done, masses.

Lots of people, lots of crowd on the floor at the San Diego Convention Center yesterday, although it was a weird sort of “lots of crowd”. The announcements that the doors were open lacked the usual Voice From Above panache, and the floor remained eerily quiet for a good 15 minutes afterwards — surely related to the massive crowd outside jockeying for position in the panel rooms.

Unlike Preview Night, when the hardcore fans come to spend, the crowd seemed slightly frugal, circling endlessly, deciding where over the four days of the show they were going to drop cash now, and where to do so later. There’s a feeling of anticipation in the massive hall, as if the attendees haven’t entirely made up their minds about their budget and how much it’s going to stretch.

In the meantime, there was a panel featuring a collection of reprobates and some guest ne’er-do-wells, which was moderated by some hack webcomics pseudojournalist.

Big news from the panel: Meredith Gran has signed a contract with a major publisher (the name will have to wait another week or so — the legalities of such deals can be rather random) and is expected to produce an omnibus edition of Octopus Pie (featuring some new art to make the styles more consistent and some extensions to the story) around this time next year. It’s welcome news, although those who both already have OP 1-3 (Hi!) and are obsessive completists (Hi, again!) may be slightly grumbling about having to make room on the shelf for another version. Dang, our lives just suck.

In other happenings:

• Robert Khoo is hinting at really interesting stuff from the forthcoming Penny Arcade anniversary book (which will be a history of the strip and the creators, rather than a collection of material). Due next year, a certain subset of webomics fans (I said hi, dammit!) are likely to find it terribly interesting.
• His panel duties done, Scott McCloud is wandering the halls and deciding what to attend and who to hang and talk with. Both of us fear the immensity of the room and the madding of the crowd that fills Hall H, but the talk today that features Hayao Miyazaki, John Lasseter, others from Disney/Pixar, footage from Ponyo, and moderated by Patton Oswalt may pull us in.
• The Indy Cartoonist Survival Guide panel was a mixed bag — with seven people on the panel (moderator Keith Knight, Lark Pien, Jim Mahfood, Paul Friedrich, and Miriam Libicki, Stephen Notley, and our own Dave Kellett) there were a lot of experiences and perspectives to be shared, but also a tendency for the conversation to slow — while Knight did a great job of always turning the questions to somebody new and keeping the flow going, so many voices on a serious topic that requires long answers can turn into a series of unwieldy moderator + one person talk, everybody else looks thoughtful moments.

  But the ideas were pretty good — the key thoughts can probably be summed up as Variety, Ownership, and Support. Let’s hit them one at a time:

  Variety: There was pretty much consensus that to be any kind of cartoonist, you have to do a variety of things. Whether it’s in the sense of finding income from multiple sources (prints, originals, books, shows, teaching/lecturing) or in the sense that you have run your business (hustle your jobs, manage all aspects of your career), the chances of you being able to merely sit in a room and draw, pass your finished work to other people to take care of the details, and then cash the check? Doesn’t happen anymore. Kellett talked about long-time syndicated cartoonists that have taken that approach to the extent that — decades later — they aren’t able to adapt and don’t even know their way around Photoshop.

  Knight, Mahfood and others took up the idea that cartoonists can do lots of thing; as Mahfood put it, Living in LA you can bullshit your way into a lot of situations. He spoke about pitching ideas for cartoons, getting option deals, how a graphic novel can be your calling card in the movie/TV world, and how he wound up painting a mural next to Banksy — because when asked Do you want to do X in exchange for money? he said, Yeah, I can do that instead of No, I’ve never done that. Also? Europe. They’re really into indy/comics artists over there and love Americans whose work is novel and not well-known. Somebody invites you to a show or a gallery, take it.

  Ownership: This was maybe Kellett’s key point: Own everything you produce. It’s no surprise that every year the con circuit brings news of another Golden or Silver age artist that needs funds raised to take care of a serious medical condition; years of work-for-hire got them a paycheck, and that it. No insurance, no originals to sell, no royalties, because they didn’t own what they worked on. Riffing on the theme, Knight shared how he had to buy back the rights to his own early strips when he realized that he was doing the work to make the sales, and somebody else was keeping the money.

  Lark Pien also hit this theme on the topic of pricing: too many artists don’t price their work appropriately (or as Knight put it, Nobody’s going to value your work unless you value it first). Sure, she sells prints in the $5 range, but also original art that’s gonig for more than $500 — going soft on the price points doesn’t make sense, but having a wide range of costs means that the fan can buy (i.e.: give you money) at a point that they find appropriate.

  Notley chimed in that finding those appropriate price points can be a little tricky, but that market forces can be made to work for you. Several times, he put a blank piece of paper up on eBay, with the auction winner getting the right to specify what would be drawn on it. After a couple auctions went in the $150 – $200 range, he had an idea what his fans would pay for originals and priced accordingly.

  Support: You have to manage your career, but you absolutely can’t do it alone. From the importance of the spouse/partner that’s bought into your artistic career to utilizing the fanboys and fangirls with skills, time, and dedication, this is a key driver for success. Kellett spoke about the challenges of living in a home with two artistic people, and how the solution was that one of them would work on the arts stuff for a few years while the other covered the bills, then swap and repeat as necessary — in each case, the artistic partner got the career to the stage where it could be the bill-paying career while the other developed the arts to the next stage.

  Libnicki talked about her husband being “a numbers guy”, and how he’s jumped into the organizational end of her career — keeping track of show sales, inventories, opportunities, and the like. Freidrich made a point about how being a cartoonist can let you choose how much support your career requires by the simple choice of where you live: I moved from LA back to North Carolina where I could make half the money and live four times as well. If you’re working as a webcomicker especially, as Knight said, you can live anywhere that’s got got high-speed data and regular FedEx pickups.

  Finally, there are people out there that you can find to help where you lack skills (although as Kellett put it, always try the task yourself first, to find out how much it’s worth to you to pay somebody else to do it). Whether it’s finding a fangirl to run his newletter (as Mahfood did), or snagging an intern, or (if you hit the right combination of successes and lack of successes) finding a Robert Khoo-like person to be the business guru, there are people out there.

  Maybe the best point was Knight’s final thought — there’s a lot of niches that your work can fit into, there’s lots of small sources of income that a company won’t find worth pursuing, but an individual can find lucrative in the aggregate. In other word, Indy cartoonists are too small to fail.

Today, the aforementioned Miyazaki panel (12:45, hall H), and hopefully the Kazu Kibuishi panel (5:30 in room 3; rumor is that Amulet‘s been extended from two books to five, with an option for up to ten!).

Photos:

Phil Foglio appears to have annoyed somebody in the Victorian era, who has sent their bounty hunters to correct his ways. Meanwhile, the Cardboard Tube Saumurai figure has apparently got on the human growth hormone. Those at the Dumbrella panel appear to be slightly unfocused and prone to photographic artifacts (maybe — that blur in the second photo is right where Scott McCloud and family would suddenly be sitting a moment later, and nobody saw them walk in — magic!).

Some quick photos before things get crazy:

• Remorseless killing machines should not be shorter than me. Except for cats.
• The warrior poised for action; about 6 inches tall and a beautiful sculpt.
• Sold out sushi in blue; red version in larger numbers in a few weeks.