We at Fleen have written about Scott Campbell before — he of the awesome Igloo Head & Tree Head stories in the various Flight anthologies, the cover of MC Frontalot’s latest CD, and the hundreds of comics over at Double Fine. Honestly, we at Fleen can’t get enough of him.

And those of you in the greater LA area will have an opportunity to check out even more of Campbell’s work this weekend, as his solo show, HOME SLICE, comes to Gallery Nucleus:

HOME SLICE is a cleverly conjured concept of cutaway homes which allows all of us the opportunity to peer into the everyday lives of the numerous charismatic characters which inhabit Scott C.’s world.

Scott C. illustrates the internal workings of Rocket House, Whale House, and Cloud House among others offering his largest original works to date.

This exhibit will be unparalleled in nature with over 25 new works, a contest giveaway, an exclusive print release, installation work as well as puppets (yes, puppets!) handsomely crafted by the talented gang over at the Annie award-winning Screen Novelties.

The opening reception is this Saturday, March 7, from 7 pm to 11 pm local time. As is the custom at such events, Campbell will be there to meet and greet, and there will be refreshments. HOME SLICE runs through March 23rd.

First off, something that you may have seen around the net; wasn’t sure I was going to talk about this because it’s not about webcomics per se, but there’s an object lesson there so let’s run with it. From Ted Rall, current president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists came a letter regarding the situaion of Brian Duffy and the Des Moines Register. Short version is that Duffy was fired recently as their editorial cartoonist, and the Register has kept his originals (25 years worth) and plans to dispose of them themselves. Full letter under the cut at the bottom.

I don’t know if Duffy’s terms of employment specified that the Register owned his originals, or was silent on the matter, or merely this is/was customary practice. Fact is, guy’s lost a job, and lost whatever value he might have obtained from selling his originals. Rall is appealing to the Register to return the originals, to (as near as I can tell) no response from the paper. Were this Europe, which has a history of creators being able to assert “moral rights” to their work, this wouldn’t have happened — but it ain’t.

Even if Duffy’s employment contract didn’t specify ownership of the originals, if the Register doesn’t choose to give them back, it’s a court case, delays, expense, and no clear outcome for potentially years. The lesson is this: if you work for somebody else in a creative capacity and you don’t have paper saying explicitly that you get to retain original works, don’t count on ever getting them back. Tattoo that someplace nice and visible on your contract-signing hand so you don’t forget.

• From Mark Ricketts comes an email (because, and this is a quote, We at Moose Mountain Comics care too damn much) about a special public service announcement from this week’s strips:
  

  Join us as we attempt to raise awareness about the nasty habits of broad-tailed rodents. SMOKING BEAVERS are a problem!* Really.

  I hope this doesn’t ruin our chance to get sponsorship from big tobacco.

  *If this notice seems vaguely pornographic, then get y’r mind out the gutter, son.

• From Brian Carroll, news that:
  

  [M]y film critique site, Genrezvous Point is going into its third major story, this time covering the Oscars (as some sort of post-world metaphoric Olympic games – it’s weird, yes, but makes sense in context).

  Also, figured I’d point out that when I was 12, I also did frog stories – “Commando Frog” which was a comic first before I made it into a weird stop motion short film later that year. Been trying to find pictures of it all day! The clay model is in storage, unfortunately.

  Man, was I the only 12 year old without a frog fetish?

• From Chris “no relation to Tracy” Flick, news that he hit the big 2-0-0 today, complete with cameo from a couple of disreputable librarian types:
  

  The first 200 strips are also being collected in trade paperback form and will be available by the time Heroes Con approaches in June.

• Finally, nothing to do with the mailbag, but Fleen sends birthday wishes to Christopher Baldwin (who turned 36 on Wednesday) and Howard Tayler (who will be 10.25 sometime after Saturday and before Sunday — silly Leap Year baby). Hope it was/will be sunshine & cupcakes for both of you fine gentlemens.

(more…)

The line at the cupcake place is down the block and around the corner, and Fashion Week is kicking in across the street (complete with the still-unaired Project Runway finalists … how are they going to keep the lid on this one?), bringing with it the hordes of snootistas that reek of too much money and other people’s labor. But there’s still things to be happy about — for example, I get Monday off work. In other news:

• Via ¡Journalista!, coverage of the Intellectual Property panel at NYCC that I didn’t get to attend; the recap goes heavy on copyright and trademark, and it good reading.
• Newly re-indyfied Steven Cloud hits the reading stage tonight for a talk about comics with Ted Rall and Stephanie McMillan at Blue Stockings bookstore tonight at 7pm. I know we mentioned this one about two weeks ago, but just in case you forgot with all the Valentines Day/Fashion Week hoopla. You can recognize Steven by his magnificent beard.
• Lost in the shuffle: interviews with Norm Feuti (by Tom Mason) and Brendan McGinley (by Brian Warmoth).
• As of this writing, Kiva Team Webcomics is eight days old; it is large (in terms of members) than Germany, Sweden, Japan, or France. It has contributed more money than Brazil, Lebanon, Austria, or Democrats (US). And for all teams created in the last eight days, Team Webcomics exceeds the monetary donations of the next-most-generous team by $7700. Keep up the momentum, guys.
• In response to our question about preserving clusters of exhibitors in their new venue, MoCCA replied that they’ll try to honor requests for booth proximity, but it will naturally be impossible to guarantee the same layouts in a very differently-shaped space. So if you want to show at MoCCA and be near the other webcomickers, be sure to request it on the reservation form.

News all over Webcomicstan this morning — there’s going to be an international gathering of creators in Easthampton, MA the weekend of March 20 — 22. Public details are a bit sketchy right now, but word on the street is that it’s going to be informal … think meetups, studio tours (lotta creators in the the Western Massachusetts zone), signings, and perhaps some light commerce. Behind the scenes will surely include creators “hanging” and “drinking”, with a side order of banging their heads together to figure out ways to entertain you more effectively.

Aspiring historians of webcomics, remember what a meet/greet for just one group of webcomickers did for one of the pioneers of our field a little over four years ago: it cemented E. B-White‘s place in our narrow discipline as The Literary One (Xaviar Xerexes remains The Cute One, and I’m Ringo), and forever associated [Dumbrella Hosting principal and Fleen publisher] Phillip Karlsson’s name with malefactors. You too could have that kind of lasting influence, or at least say hi to some talented people and enjoy some sophisticated adult beverages that make everybody around you seem smarter and more attractive.

In other news today, books!

• Via Mike Russell, news that Dylan Meconis is going to be self-publishing the collected Bite Me; I am ashamed to say that I didn’t catch this new myself, but Meconis’s current series, Family Man, is one that I only visit every few months so that I can absorb as many pages at one time as possible — I simply cannot read one page a week without going mad with anticipation. Meconis is podcating about the self-publishing experience with fellow conspirator Bill Mudron, which you should listen to with the caveat that there may be the odd naughty word or concept in your earbuds.
• And who’s up for a new Templar, AZ book? If you didn’t shout Me! Over here, me!, you’re a filthy liar because all right-thinking people love Templar, AZ. From Spike herself:
  

  I’m now taking pre-orders for book three of TAZ, with the same intent as always: To cover the print bill. I’ve put everything I sell on sale, but the prices are going right back up the second the bill’s covered. This won’t last forever, so people have gotta hurry.

  You heard the lady — get your orders in, ’cause she don’t go to print ’til it’s paid for and I want my book, dammit.

Things that have happened since we last ran current news:

• Dave Roman did some walking around at NYCC, did some panels, and did some thinking on the future of [web]comics and how digital future media will be. Good reads, and well worth your time.
• While at NYCC, I got to speak to Scott Kurtz and Meredith Gran about their recent pushes into premium content — both have seen a modest take-up amongst their readers (although Kurtz’s jumped when he announced the first three months of net profits would go to the Ringo Scholarship at SCAD), and are pretty much playing it by ear.

  The big questions in this experiment (and this year of economic turmoil is nothing if not a test-bed for new approaches to making a living online) is how many people will carry over from the first month to the second, and whether or not people will even sign up for that first month, believing themselves to be locked into an automatically-renewing subscription that keeps charging them (they aren’t).

  Similarly, I was contacted recently by Israel L’Heureux (what a great name), one of the founders of Assetbar. To clarify some of my initial descriptions of the Fanflow program, it was built by L’Heureux and his compatriots to meet Chris Onstad‘s needs, and has been generalized as a tool for the community since. The commenting/rating interface at Achewood (aka acheworld), while powered by the first iteration of the AssetBar technology, is not part of the premium feature set, and remains free to use. Fleen thanks L’Heureux for the clarification and regrets the incorrect description.

• In the less-than-a-week since the webcomics team at Kiva launched, membership has swelled (as of this writing) to 132 and total lending to $4500, placing Team Webcomics 42nd out of 481 teams in terms of membership, and somewhere around 127th in terms of money lent (placing well above teams in existence for many months). Take that, Team Harvard!
• Yep, it’s true. Gotta love the commenters taking it seriously.
• Finally, check what popped into my inbox a few minutes ago — the long-anticipated exhibitor registration for MoCCA Art Fest ’09 is now available:
  

  Exhibitor Applications & Guidelines for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s 2009 MoCCA Festival are now available for download on the museum’s website [PDF].

  Artists, writers, and publishers wishing to have a table at the 2009 Festival are encouraged to get in their applications and payment as early as possible, as well over half of vendor space has already been sold to returning exhibitors and MoCCA members.

  The 2009 MoCCA Festival will take place the weekend of June 6-7 at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street in New York City. As the 69th Regiment Armory is a much larger venue, nearly 100 more exhibitors will be attending, and arranged in a more democratic manner than in previous years.

  MoCCA will begin accepting and processing new 2009 MAF Exhibitor Applications on Thursday, February 12th. Exhibitor applications arriving at the Museum before that date will be processed as if postmarked at 11:59pm on February 11th.

  We have an inquiry in with MoCCA to see if the new venue allows the webcomics creators to a) be clustered together as at the Puck Building, and b) to have some newcomers join the party. Answers as we receive them.

I have performed another pass through my near-illegible notes of NYCC happenings, so please forgive me for any omissions yesterday, and for things that happened when I was largely out of the loop. For instance, I met a capital fellow named Colin who was attending his very first con, and he totally didn’t go insane. Also, in the photos below, you will see on Vincent LaBate, writer of Kitty Hawk, and my fellow Studio Foglio booth monkey; one really couldn’t ask for better company.

In missed news, we didn’t even have time to report on the DrMcColorist search before it was done. Everybody feel good for Anthony “Nedroid” Clark. Nor did we have time to mention that it’s now The End Times over at Ugly Hill, as creator Paul Southworth wraps up the story and prepares for his next project. I’m gonna miss the sexist, classist, ocularist, speciesist, and everything-else-ist Hastings Kilgore, but I can’t wait to see what Southworth drops on us next.

Okay: pictures!

Over at the Studio Foglio booth, you had Vincent (L) and Phil (R) in a moment of repose before the storm. I think that Phil’s mom (L) had little idea what she was in for. But the weekend saw plenty of Girl Genius cosplayers, including three different Agathas, one of whom brought her own Gil, and another who showed up with an unrelated Zeetha.

Non-GG-themed costumes that stopped to say hi included various iterations of punky and steamy, with odd doo-dads and thingies aplenty.

Wandering by the booth you had fake webcomickers, various villainesses, a herculean Hulk towering over the crowd, and above it all, the privileged few in their luxury suites.

Back in the trenches, Mike and Jerry enjoyed their last moment of quiet for two days (aside from a panel or two), men in snappy hats did snappy things, and filthy hobos huddled for warmth around an open fire. Meanwhile, Ryan Sohmer came out totally blurry (it’s rumored that he can’t be photographed unless he wishes it), and the hardest working man in webcomics was … somewhere else? Huh. Better work on that, Brad.

Andy Bell, on discovering I was working a different booth — You’re dead to us, Gary.

Me, to Jon Rosenberg, in reponse to the Dumbrella goods sign — Can I have a hug?
Rosenberg — No.

Back to regular stuff tomorrow.

Well, Scott Kurtz may have feared the pimps and chuds that reside in New York, but apparently the only thing to fear was not bringing enough stuff to sell. In the time that I made it away from helping at the Studio Foglio booth (read Girl Genius, dammit — it’s brilliant), it appeared the theme of NYCC09 (apart from Scott Pilgrim rules) was What recession?

Talking things over with Heidi MacDonald on Saturday night, we marvelled at where all the money we saw getting dropped was coming from. Then we talked at length about Cyanide and Happiness, and I was able to point her in the direction of Kris, Dave, and Rob so that she could get educated on the gentlemen in question. Meeting Rob, Kris, and Dave was one of the highlights of the show for me (C&Her Matt was unable to attend, unfortunately), and I quickly discovered several things about them:

• They dress sharply, with jackets, bowties, and snappy hats (bowler, fedora, top)
• The single most common word out of their mouths is thanks, or some variation thereon; I’m struck by how genuinely grateful they are for the well-wishes and interactions from readers
• They’re almost digustingly young, and I had to fight the urge to tell them to stay the hell off my lawn
• Kris flew to New York from his home in Wyoming; per the latest US Census data, the population of Wyoming should have no more than 0.73 of one cartoonist, making him a rounding error or a statistic anomaly — a charming one, in a hat

Mike “Mister” Krahulik and Jerry “Mister” Holkins can, in fact, have a conversation without using the word wang; they brought their teach schoolkids to make comics program to NYCC, and despite the fact that there were about 90% adults in the audience, they conducted the program for the inner 3rd grader in all of us. Takeaways:

• My art skills have improved from subliterate stick figures to barely recognizable cartoon men, ladies, cats, elephants, octopi, dogs, and monkeys … the secret is ovals, the letters C and T, and not worrying that I don’t draw as well as Mr Krahulik
• Those barely recognizable cartoons will accompany me to my grave

Speaking of Penny Arcade, a talk with P-A business supremo Robert Khoo led to some secret plans about where the website is heading, which I can now reveal exclusively: Penny Arcade will be making comics about videogames, then releasing those comics in book form.

Other people I was thrilled to run into (in many cases, meeting for the first time), in no particular order:

• Karl Kerschl, who when asked for a Charles Christopher sketch, interrupted his commission sketch list to do an absolutely beautiful rendering of his title character, utilizing no fewer than four separate pens
• Rosscott, of The System, whose business card is as beautifully stark as his comic
• Milton Griepp of ICv2, with whom Phil Foglio and I had an interesting talk about webcomics, making money by giving things away, and what support services may be needed there
• Joey Manley, host extraordinaire; should he ever invite you to a party, jump on the opportunity because the food and booze and company and environs will all be wonderful
• Every one of the Foglio superfans who presented in nervous, thrilled states to meet Our Hero — you remind us why we love this medium so much (and to the five Girl Genius cosplayers — excellent jobs, all of you)
• No fewer than three people (Susan, John, and I’m sorry, didn’t get the third one’s name) who came up to say hi and recognized me solely by the moustache
• No fewer than three others who were convinced that I was Phil Foglio — given the general level of worship Phil’s fans demonstrate, I was tempted to agree with them and ride out the love
• Ottilie Millson, better known as Phil’s mom, who was with us in the booth for the weekend, and who assures us she still has the baby photos
• Carla Speed McNeil, whose Finder you really should be reading; grab the trades, then get to work on the latest story which is at her website
• Onezumi and Harknell, lovely people and soon to be forces of nature at next weekend’s Katsucon
• Darren Gendron of Dear Pirate, if only for the the business card that identifies him as a “known scallywag” (some evidence indicates that he may not be a scallywag after all)
• Magnolia Porter, who just happened to be at the ROFLThing party on Saturday night and whose Bobwhite is good readin’

But unfortunately, there are downsides to any convention:

• The creative team behind Remedy offered me a naked bribe in the form of a print to drum up some attention for their webcomic from Fleen. For shame! Naked bribery at NYCC is my schtick (traditionally on Saturday morning, I make the rounds with coffee and donuts for those who need them).
• The local restaurants that dropped menus off at every booth were apparently unprepared to handle the volume of orders from the Javits Center, resulting in late and often severely compromised food
• But they were still better than the convention center sandwiches, which lacked any kind of moistening agents (mayo, mustard, anything) for the low-low price of only nine bucks apiece
• Missing all but the last five minutes of the Making Comic Strips panel (with Danielle Corsetto and Brad Guigar) due to unannounced and undocumented room changes

Overheard during the show:
Mr Krahulik, on piggybacking your new comic to an existing audience — If you want to do a comic about a horse, maybe there’s a website that would like to run it. So have your mom and dad check out horselovers.com and ask.
Mr Holkins, on that suggestion — That might not be the best website to contact, kids.

Mr Holkins, on being offered a Saturday morning pick-me-up — Wait, there’s coffe in there? That’s a box.
Me, in reply — Yep. Want a donut?
Holkins — Don’t you worry about eroding the wall of your journalistic integrity?
Me — In fact, this is naked bribery.

A young woman who was literally dragged through the crowd by her friends to meet her idol, Phil Foglio, and was reduced to a state of bashful vibrations and giggling — Hi.

Danielle Corsetto, to Tom Wilson II at the conclusion of their panel, bouncing with excitement — I have to get a picture with you!

An ancient and white-haired bartender at the ComicSpace party, having been asked by Corsetto if he knew “how to make a Sex on the Beach” — I always get sand in it.
Corsetto, in response — He’s my New York boyfriend.

Pics tomorrow.

Quickly now (and since I’m going to be busy all day tomorrow, let this serve as fair warning that you’ll be getting a canned update and if anything newsworthy breaks I’m sorry for not covering it).

• Readers of Fleen will recognize the name John Baird as being the gentleman (in every sense of the word) behind The Create a Comic Project. He’d like you to know:
  

  [J]udges are needed! The Create a Comic Project is having it’s third annual Comic Making Tournament on Saturday, March 14, 2009. If you’re a comic artist who lives near New Haven, CT, please consider stopping by.

  Local media has been asked to cover the tournament, so you may get some free press out of it. At the very least, you’ll get the “Ooos” and “Aaahs” of several dozen enthusiastic kids.

  If you’re interested, send an email to createacomic at gmail dot com.

• Anybody given this a test drive yet? Tyler Martin’s ComicPress plug-in for WordPress is practically the standard for webcomic sites, but there’s a new offering. Zachary Lewis went looking for a content management system that fit his needs, and wound up writing his own. SomeryC suports comments, news articles, an RSS feed, timed publishing (queueing) and in-browser uploading; it’s available for download here, is discussed here, and Lewis is looking for feedback/feature requests here.
• Nudged to action by alert reader “L”:
  

  Hey, you haven’t posted about mezzacotta.net/postcard yet, in which David Morgan-Mar and co. have hit on the laziest webcomic concept ever. What? How can it be lazier than an algorithm that makes the comics for you? You’ll see.

  Indeed you will. From the Comments on a Postcard about page:

  The Guernsey Comics Collective became a cult hit in the late 1990s with their witty series Mango Chutney! In 1998, chief writer Billy Striker began to collect together various other ideas in order to start another strand of work. Painstakingly, the other members of the team began to assemble art, lettering, and design for the series, until they were ready to storm the world once more.

  Unfortunately, a fire broke out in the headquarters of the collective in mid 2001, and only one man escaped…. The only surviving legacy of this great creative work of the GCC is the “director’s commentary”, the notes and minutes carried by the publisher that would have marked a spectacular comeback.

  So, director’s commentary on a series of strips, but the actual strips themselves have been destroyed. And the commentary has actually been reconstructed not by the mezzacotta crew, but by a series of dedicated volunteers. Still, one can only wonder at the marvels the strips might once have shown.

First of all, look up there at what I got in the mail today, still in its protective plastic shield to guard against troublesome postal carriers and customs guys! There’s so much cool emananting from those ladies, it threatens to make me sit at the dork table in the lunchroom.

Okay, for those of you going to NY Comic Con next week, here’s some panels you may want to keep an eye out for. Some of them are directly related to webcomics, some have webcomics luminaries associated with them, and some are nothing to do with webcomics per se, but will be useful or awesome nonetheless.

Not listed in the program guide, but Carla Speed McNeil will be on two panels, where she is consistently an awesome speaker:

Soooooo … we pointed out about two weeks ago that John Campbell, was preparing for his annual descent into madness, aka hourly comics. Although he’s struggling against microbial attempts to kill him, so far he prevails, and has indeed convinced others to join in his unique brand of sleepless creation. Kate Beaton has the most compact roundup of Hourly Comics Doers, and you can get in on it less than two weeks hence when Hourly Comics Day hits. Give in to the madness.

• Fresh off his 2005 talk finally getting posted to the TED video site, Scott McCloud follows up with an interview with Jesse Thorn on The Sound of Young America. I didn’t know this one was coming up, so it was just luck that I was near a radio last night and heard Jesse’s intro at the top of the show. As mentioned a few weeks back when he spoke with Chris Onstad and David Malki !, Thorn is probably the best radio interviewer in the game today, and his talk with McCloud was a terrific listen — you can check out the podcast here.

  And if that weren’t enough, the Sunday evening guy on WNYC followed up TSOYA with the weather, some teasers for the programming to come, and the revelation that he used to be the McCloud family babysitter. As I wrote to Scott last night, it’s a weird world, and he sits in the middle of it all (the world, and the weird).

• Finally, Heidi MacDonald brought us some news over the weekend — following in the footsteps of Phil & Kaja Foglio, Carla Speed McNeil, and Wendy & Richard Pini, Colleen Doran has converted her formerly-print indy comic to a webcomic. One of the things you should know about Ms Doran is that she runs a lot of links and posts at her blog on creator’s resources — agents, copyright and trademark info, things like that.

  Oh, and while I’m here, we’ll note that while she doesn’t have a table, Ms McNeil will be attending NYCC and contribute to two panels — come back later in the week, we’ll give you the details, along with all the other webcomics-relevant panels we can find.