Okay, not really, but there’s a data semi-outage that hit San Diego yesterday, and a subset of customers of my carrier were affected, leaving me with no 3G while Andy Bell (standing right next to me with the identical phone on the same carrier) had a smokin’ hot signal. Bastard.

If not for the fact that he (pictured right, above) and Chris Yates (pictured left, above) both had astounding news (Bell will be partnering with ______ to produce a figure of their iconic _______; Yates is ready to work with a major _________ of _______ to _______ his ________ … we’ll be able to start filling in those blanks in a month or so), I might have gone on a murder spree. A’course, for a proper murder spree, you need a murderdog, and the only one I know is 3000 miles away and only a year old, so that plan’s out the window. Oh, and happy first anniversary to The System.

The Dr McNinja book launch party (no pics from me due to no flash on the phone camera and too many good drinks) was a great success, with webcomics fans taking over the upper floor of Rock Bottom Brewery and the drinks menu. Modest reports from creator Chris Hastings that the book “seems to be doing well” at the show; reports from others are that it’s tearing up the 1200 aisle. The other great successes appear to be Bell’s Oh No Sushi figure (completely sold out; I appear to have gotten the second-to-last-one) and the Penny Arcade Cardboard Tube Samurai figures, both of which need to be seen to be believed.

Also, Brian Sunter (to whom I introduced you yesterday) appears to have survived Preview Night (which all agree was busier than last year, leading to some trepidation that Saturday afternoon may kill the weaker vendors right in their booths) and is eager to see what a full day of crowd brings. All the pictures I’ve taken of him since Tuesday night depict him as a blur of motion, so it appears he may be one of the strong ones. Good luck, Brian!

Up today: the Dumbrella (1:30, room 3) and Indy Survival Tips (5:00, room 10) panels; I’ll bring you as complete a report on both as I can. Pending an alignment of schedules, I’ll be sitting down with Jeff Rowland and Holly Post of Topatoco to suss out their plans for eventual mediasphere domination. Now it’s time to make my way through an uncharacteristically overcast (approaching foggy!) San Diego and past the shantytown of those camping out since yesterday for the Twilight panels (which I hope to God are today and not later on in the week, for their sakes … then again, I also hope that somebody has a stack of these to plaster all over those waiting in line).

Photos:
Stacks of the Webcomics Section, waiting to be snapped up by the eager hordes. Said eager hordes slightly absent just before the hall opened, but more than willing to innundate the webcomics neighborhood in the 1200/1300/1400 aisles.

… although it appears that uploading pics is a bit dicey. The workaround appears to involve tweeting the photos and then aggregating via Twitpic — it’s a bit of a pain, so don’t expect it all the time. Let’s talk about Tuesday night at the San Diego Convention Center.

Now then, see that pic up above? That will, in short order, be the Penny Arcade booth, swarming with stuff beyond imaginings (including one of my must-haves of the show). The blur on the left is PA business guru Robert Khoo. The blur on the right is Brian Sunter, who prevailed over 800 other candidates to become the new trade show/supply chain guy. The written test that they described defied description (Khoo confirmed that I would have taken myself out of the running — had I gotten that far — on the question about laundry), but what’s more mind-boggling is that this is Sunter’s

1. first Comic-Con
2. first week on the job

If you’re in town, come by and shake his hand and wish him luck. He’s the tall, rugged-looking blur.

Other photos:

In mere hours, these empty booths will transform themselves into booths crammed full of merchandise and art. There will be crowds as far as the eye can see. Some booths are more colorful than others, and the local Red Bull distributor already knows about this place. Heading back over to chronicle the remainder of setup, and then the madness — madness I say! — that is Preview Night. Pray for Mojo.

Be warned, tomorrow’s post will likely be written tonight and thus not all that timely, what with flights and everything.

But today, I want to share something that those of you heading to San Diego Comic-Con will be able to pick up: following on the heels of newsprint comics sections from the likes of Box Brown and DC Comics, a good portion of webcomics (looks to be around twenty of your favorites, including some from creators who won’t even be there — that’s how much they love you!) are getting together to produce a sampler. Four pages long, full color, actual newspaper just like you remember and absolutely free to you.

Jorge Cham (official Smart Guy, who managed to show me up by sticking with his doctoral program) wrangled the artists, put it together, oversaw the printing, and will be delivering it ’round to the various booths in Webcomics Alley; you’ll be able to get your copy starting Wednesday night for as long as they last. If you should see Cham (he’ll be exhibiting with the Unshelved guys at booth 2300, which is ironically not in the webcomics area, but is near the main entrance), be sure to thank him.

Dang, don’t know where my brain is. Well, here’s some stuff for y’all:

• Sooner than expected, Little Dee book #3 has hit the store shelves; get ’em while they’re hot. Grab one of the sweet posters, too (I think I need the one of Shibuya crossing).
• Reports from last night’s Super Art Fight! are sketchy — survivors continue to trickle into aid stations, but no clear picture of the devastation‘s full scope has yet emerged.
• Told you earlier this week about the webcomics show at the Cartoon Art Museum (as curated by Andrew Farago); those of you in Tokyo will be able to get your own taste of Farago’s curatorial skills, as the CAM collaborated with Studio (freakin’) Ghibli to mount an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo on the works of famed illustrator Mary Blair:
  

  The Colors of Mary Blair is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo from July 18 through October 4, 2009.

  Cartoon Art Museum Curator Andrew Farago and his wife, cartoonist and editor Shaenon K. Garrity, assisted Studio Ghibli with the assembly of this exhibition. The pair co-curated the Cartoon Art Museum’s 2007-08 exhibition of Blair’s work, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, and were recruited by Studio Ghibli to act as liaisons between their curatorial team and the Mary Blair Estate.

  The travel to Japan to set up the show was chronicled by Shaenon Garrity in a three–part series at Comixology. Try not to hate Andrew & Shaenon for getting to hang around with Hayao Miyazaki (I know, the envy is overwhelming, but try anyway).

• Brigid Alverson talks to Gina Biggs on independent publishing & webcomickry. Please enjoy.

Okay, back to getting things ready for San Diego. Please forgive any erratic posting schedule that might crop up next week, and keep an eye on my Twitter; if you’re going to be there, I’ll most likely be found in a 30 meter radius of booth 1337.

When last we saw our brave heroes, they were bravely braving the crowds at the San Diego Convention Center, making their way to the webcomic-related panels of the San Diego Comic-Con. We join them now as they bravely begin the weekend….

Saturday

Sunday

Hey, who wants to see panels that are webcomics-themed at SDCC? Everything on this list either came up with the searchable keyword “webcomics”, or my reading of the description indicated that it would be damn interesting to webcomickers, or it’s just so unrelentingly cool that it deserves a mention on its own. But please be aware that not everything with the “webcomics” tag is likely to be recognizable as what readers of this blog consider webcomicky. For instance, consider this:

Marvel Digital Comics…and Beyond! — Since its groundbreaking November 2007 debut, Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited has been all the Internet rage! It’s the greatest collection of Marvel comics ever assembled online and it’s only getting better. Featuring over 6,000 titles with newly digitized comics added every weekday, the site now features its own line of digital-first exclusive comics. Members of the Marvel Digital Media Group will tell you all about the state of Marvel digital comics, casual games, original streaming video and the future of Marvel’s ever-growing digital endeavors. Room 6DE

… which refers to Marvel scanning old back issues and putting them up behind a subscription wall. Yep, it got tagged as “webcomics”. I’ll be chopping down the descriptions to something less breathless, and if I feel the need to comment further, [I’ll do so in an editor’s note]. Naturally, there are probably omissions and you should feel free to point out other sessions (full listing here) in the comments.

Thursday

Friday

That’s all for now; come back tomorrow for the weekend programming.

Is it a nice day where you are? It’s freakin’ gorgeous out, and after the very wet spring that we had in the northeast of ‘Merica, it might be the first really-damn-nice day of the year. On really-damn-nice days, the last thing I want to do is parse the schedule for SDCC to figure out which program sessions labelled “webcomics” actually have anything to do with webcomics, so we’ll come back to that tomorrow. In the meantime, have some notices about upcoming events.

• PHILADELPHIA! Brian “Box” Brown brings the Bellen bandwagon to the burlesques of the Philadelphia Dr Sketchy’s event this Friday. Can any event advertised under the tagline DAMES, DRINKING, & DRAWING be bad? I think not.
• NEW JERSEY! It’s the third Saturday of the month coming up, and that means that the latest iteration of New Jersey Webcomic Chaos descends on the unsuspecting library of Rutgers University — given that the university community is sad that a planned presidential visit got scrubbed in favor of a larger outdoor venue, this should act as a balm for those who felt deeply the disappointment of fun being cancelled on campus. Contact New Jersey webcomic stalwart Onezumi for details.
• BALTIMORE! THURSDAY THURSDAY THURSDAY! Born of the crucible of the Iron Artist event at Katsucon, Super Art Fight is the webcomics equivalent of THE OCTAGON (GON gon gon … ). Artist will meet artist in a duel to deaaaath!!

  Sorry — mic was turned up too loud. As I was saying, Super Art Fight is, if not the artistic equivalent of bloodsports, at least a full-bore live performance art / rock show with elements of graffiti artwork, improv comedy and wrestling-style drama all rolled into one. Check out last year’s show, and this year’s promos.

  The fourth show kicks off at The Ottobar on Thursday night, as a sort of slam-dance aperitif to the Otakon festivities that start Friday. Expected for the mayhem fun are founders Nick Borkowicz and Marty Day, Jamie Noguchi, and Ross Nover, along with combatants Chris Impink, Garth Graham, Yuko Ota, Ananth Panagariya, and Mohammad Haque, Michael Bracco, Jamie Baldwin, Brian Prindiville and Darren Gendron, and much more. Catch the chaos!

See, today was going to be easy. The last twelve hours brought the announcement of two webcomics book-launch parties, which combined with reminders one already in the news would give me a post that writes itself. Quick compare and contrast (slightly grimy basement bar with vengeful barmaids vs. Preview Night party at San Diego Comic Con complete with DJ vs. the beautifulest of the Hollywood beautiful people sipping effortlessly elegant drinks by a fire), throw in an offhand title about how there ain’t no party like a webcomics book-launch party (why yes, I am the whitest guy on the planet, thanks for asking), boom, finished.

Add a quick addendum about how (speaking of San Diego Comic Con) Alice Bentley is again compiling a list of webcomickers in attendance (and since nobody’s mailing me their info to run, Alice is once again our best resource … please drop a comment in her LJ) and we can all get on with our day.

Then John Allison had to go and get all newsworthy:

This is a brief announcement to say that Scary Go Round will be ending in September. The eighth collection will be the last. Goodbye is the final story. I’m sure a lot of you had worked this out already.

Well, shit.

If your claw-like fingers are rending your clothes to rags as we speak, I would ask you to be calm. I have a new project in mind and, like the transition from Bobbins to Scary Go Round back in 2002, it won’t all be new, all different. I could probably have got away with making the change with no fanfare at all and kept the name the same.

Oh, well that’s all right then.

I don’t want to talk about my new project yet as it would spoil the current story, but you can rest assured that there will be plenty that you recognise about it. I’m not sure about the exact end date of Scary Go Round, and there may be something transitional in between, but expect no interruption in service.

I take great pleasure from entertaining and surprising people, writing and drawing are a continual source of joy to me and I will endeavour to do both for as long as I am able.

I actually left a bit out from what Allison wrote, about the economics of webcomics and how the landscape has changed for even one of the long-respected exemplars of the genre. All those who take interest in this medium and its vagaries will find it required reading.

Look, just nobody do anything important & time-sensitive today, okay? Okay.

• Report on the first meeting of the extension chapter of the North Carolina WebComics Coffee Clatch, via TS Holden in Boone, NC:
  

  It went well, we had a thin crowd (to be expected) but ended up moving from the coffee shop to Mellow Mushroom, where there was pizza and beer. We talked for a good four hours about all kinds of subjects, from the very practical to the extremely obscure.

  Evan [Dahm] and I will be sure to figure out the next meeting further in advance so that we can get the word out better. We’re also considering having the next meeting in a more centralized town (for Western NC) such as Asheville or Hickory.

• Joseph Hewitt is putting together a book for the sake of family togetherness:
  

  It’s been a long eleven months since the birth of my son, Sean. With the help of many great guest artists I’ve managed to keep Ataraxia Theatre going (mostly).

  I’ve just released a print collection of Voles of the Dusk. This is my first wide release print venture in well over ten years. The book contains three stories — Voles of the Dusk, Scum Hive, and The Vole that Dare Not Speak its Name. It’s 84 pages long, color cover, black and white inside. All proceeds from the book are going to my family to help them afford a trip to Korea to see Sean.

• Anthrocon kicks off this weekend (hi, Ursula!), so allow me to point you towards what may be the most stylishly designed furry webcomic/grpahic novel — Five Glasses of Absinthe. “Egypt Urnash” (that’s what the email return address says; it’s written by Nick Brienza and drawn by Spümcø escapee Margaret Trauth) promises:
  

  Five Glasses of Absinthe is an adult fantasy inspired by French New Wave films, 70s prog-rock album covers, and the simple joy of drawing lots of smart, sexy people in really happening boots.

  Be aware that some of the smart, sexy people will have animal ears and tails (and/or engage in sex, presumably of the smart variety). Not really into the whole “animal people get it on” genre, but the visual style is striking; give it a once-over if you’re not at work.

Okay, that’s gonna do it for now; gotta get busy with the whole “taking off early the day before a holiday” thing that is the god-given right — nay, the holy obligation — of all Americans who toil for The Man. There may be beer in the immediate future, beer and cupcakes.

Oh man, I am sitting on some really cool stories right now — can’t spill the proverbial beans just yet, but at least one of these is gonna make those of you that love awesome things squeal with delight. Just sit tight ’til next week. Onto what we can talk about.

• Is there a more beautifully-drawn webcomic than Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher? The gentle (if not overly bright) yeti hit two years of updates with a heartbreaking pair of parallel stories.
• So yesterday Jon Rosenberg announced that the launch party for his new color collection would be the day after tomorrow. Apparently, the timing didn’t work too well for a lot of people, so now it’s been pushed back, with best estimates centered on 11 July, 2pm, at the famed Peculier Pub. I’m personally hoping there will be a guest list, velvet rope, and big intimidating dude with a headset at the entrance. In any event, assuming the date doesn’t change, our ace reportorial staff will be there to cover the star-studded event.
• Plan B, a music/culture magazine from the UK, has apparently wrapped — the current issue is the last — which is a shame because they just discovered webcomics in a big way. They haven’t updated their website with the article (and mostly likely won’t get around to doing so), but Box Brown (featured in the writeup along with Rene Engström and Meredith Gran) has scanned it for your enjoyment.

Also, nothing to do with webcomics, but you will be the better for knowing:

• Tasmanian wallabies are getting high on opium and creating crop circles.
• The Mythbusters (minus the hugely pregnant Kari Byron) will have a session at San Diego Comic Con, to be moderated by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer; this is what’s known as a localized nerd singularity inside the greatest concentration of geekery known to mankind. Somebody save me a seat.