Admitted Dumbrellist Andy Bell is having a gallery show! Yeah, nothing new, guy does gallery shows all over the damn place, but this one is coming up soon! The day after tomorrow, you (yes, YOU) have the opportunity to wend your way into wildest Brooklyn and check out his majesty.

The promo posters exhibit Andy’s usual flair for whimsicality, with an absolutely sunny outlook on life. Honest.

So watch out for parasites and spores, and come shake the hand of the very scary man. Day after tomorrow. Here.

So, the innaugural New York Comic-con has come and gone; logistical problems aside (too many people, too little space, all the high-traffic booths together), it was apparently a success for the webcomickers in attendance. Both Bryant Paul Johnson and Phil Kahn came up to introduce themselves, the Blank Label guys are all super-nice, and our illustrious publisher bought me beer. A success by any measure! A few wee items to tide you over:

First, on behalf of the BLC crew, a piece of advice for Reed Exhibitions: you screwed up bad by rescheduling their panel. Funny, engaging guys were not able to participate, and it was to the detriment of your show. When the next NYCCC comes up, stick by the schedule you promise. Second, a piece of advice for all webcomics fanboys and fangirls out there: the secret to getting creators to like you is to bring them something they want; bribery works! Third, there will be reviews running this week of books I picked up, and some follow-on interviews in the coming weeks.

Other impressions:

• If he ever decides to give up webomics, Steve Troop has a future in both puppeteering and puppetmaking
• Brad Guigar and Paul Southworth? Separated at birth
• Dave Kellett is funny in a way that a safe-for-six-year-olds newspaper-style audience will never appreciate
• Kris Straub has the ability to kill furries with his mind, for which he deserves your undying thanks
• These three ladies had the booth next to the CBLDF; if you’re one of those guys that gave us money or bought a membership just to have clear sightlines, thank you

News: Fleen will shortly have a new contributor! Due to overwhelming response regardaring This Week In Webcomics Boning, we have obtained the services of an insider. Join us on a trip inside the seamy underbelly of webcomics: the booze, the drugs, the parties, the fast cars and faster women … each Thursday, all this and more will fall under the scrutiny of our very own Tuesday Crimson. Naturally, we will be protecting Ms Crimson’s identity closely, but trust us: she’s got the dirt.

By the time you read this, elements of Dumbrella (including this guy and this guy) and Blank Label Comics (with the scintillating Paul Southworth, sinister Kristofer Straub, kid-friendly Dave Kellet, tenacious Steve Troop, and gregarious Brad Guigar) will be doing final setup at the Jacob Javits Conference Center for the innaugural New York City Comic-Con (not to be confused with the nerd prom of similar name).

Fleen will also be semi-representing, with one of us (me) doing shifts at the CBLDF booth on Saturday. On Sunday, don’t forget to check out the panel titled The Future of Comics: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Where It’s Going…Online, featuring the abovementioned Blank Labellers, Mr Jon Rosenberg of Goats, and Heewoon Chung of Netcomics; room 1E03, 1:00 pm. Drop by and feel free to poke any of them with a wooden spoon.

There will be webcomickers boozing after (and possibly during) the show on several days. Secrets will be pried from the dark recesses of their brains. Interviews, book reviews, and compromising photos will be making their way here over the following weeks.

Plus! For those of you in Western Massachussets, there’s Llamacon at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. Check out the very sexy R Stevens, Randy Milholland, and Jeph Jacques while dodging rampaging herds of catgirls.

Saturday was your big chance to be part of history, to join in the 70th annual Burt Reynolds day.

I remember the first time I celebrated Burt Reynolds day. It was, in fact, Saturday.

I was sitting in an odd little pub, having beer with Byron of Team Special Olympics. “Today is Burt Reynolds Day”, says your intrepid reporter, “You should participate!”

In a flash, Byron produced some bristol board and a blueline pencil, and had whipped out a number of extra fine quality comics that not only featured the man of the hour, Burt Reynolds, but also had wit and charm that made the entire bar fall on the floor and roll around on that sticky sticky surface laughing uncontrollably.

And I knew that I was in a moment of greatness and that nobody there would fail to remember Burt Reynolds Day, and that I had witnessed a tiny slice of history being created.

If only Byron had posted his comics.

P.S. Buy! Buy! Buy! (this message brought to you by D.J. Coffman)

First of all, Jephy McJacquespants got snippy with us the other day — mocking, even — and so we’re not going to give him the satisfaction of a full writeup of Dr McNinja, no matter how much he pimps it. We’re just going to quietly enjoy it ourselves.

Secondly, Achewood appears to have settled once and for all who the cooler character is: Roast Beef or Ray. Sure, the focus these days shifts between them about equally (probably favoring Ray), and they’re both cats of high comedic accomplishment; they straight-up think the deep thoughts like, if an atom bomb goes off, you should check Yahoo News. And plus I have been wanting to drink beer. Truly, lessons for life.

But what tips things permanently in favor of Beef is his reaction today when he realized that Ray comes from a noble lineage:

Serious dude in the 1973 Fight your dad pioneered some of the rawest moves in modern brawling ! He was like the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass !

First off: Beef used punctuation. He hardly ever does that, generally only when his is truly delighted and at his most polite; you gotta get some truly deep-down Beef emotions for punctuation to appear.

Secondly, today saw the birth of what history will surely record as the Very Finest Roast Beefism Ever: the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass. I predict generic form of x is like the Thomas Edison of y will be the next nerd-culture meme, even displacing the venerable Step 3: Profit! and Needs more cowbell. But what did you expect? Chris Onstad is like the Thomas Edison of amazing dialogue.

You might have seen it at Comixpedia, or at their home page — the Webcartoonist’s Choice Awards have announced their timeline for the year. What struck me about the announcement is the scheduling: nominations open on 15 May, with the awards themselves dropping on 17 July. The logical question here is, “Why are awards for achievement in 2005 happening closer to 2007?” For answers, let’s hear from WCCA Chairman Mark (Zortic) Mekkes:

There are a couple of reasons that it’s set when it is. For one thing, it’s a quieter time of year for everyone. People have more time to look at nominees than they do immediately following the holidays (like now). The other main reason is to coincide with ComicCon. By announcing the results just before ComicCon, it gives people something to discuss, brag about or debate in San Diego.

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Comic conventions are always a good thing. They’re a great opportunity to meet and greet other artists, smell the fans, and get really really drunk (while still being able to deduct it as a business expense!).

In particular, conventions can go a long way towards helping a nascent collection of rabble gel into a full blown community – and the UK Web And Mini Comix Thing has been trying to help that process along for the last three years. Fleen has only ever heard good things from those who attended – that it’s a positive experience and a good thing in general for the UK indie comics scene.

But the thing about conventions that most people don’t know is… they can be an excruciating ordeal to actually run. They say you don’t have to be crazy to run a convention, but they also say it sure helps.

We received the following response from “Thing”, when we asked for a press release about the upcoming UK Web And Mini Comix Thing 2006. This is presented almost completely unedited (we corrected or at least Americanized spellings, and added links and removed some leading and trailing text that was not directly related – but otherwise this is verbatim what we received).
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The newest webcomics meme has hit over at LiveJournal.

People are drawing Batgirl! Webcomics types like Meredith Gran (Mer gets top billing because she designed our kickass masthead — thanks, Mer!), Ian Jones-Quartey, Brian Lee O’Malley, Abby L., R Stevens, Vera Brosgol, Ryan Estrada, Ryan North, Lem, Kean Soo, and Kristopher Straub have taken a whack at drawing the commissioner’s daughter. Also Andy Runton. Okay, Andy works in the print comics world, but Owly is too cute for words, and you should go buy all of his books.

And that’s just the people whose names caught my eye when scrolling down the list — as of this writing, there are nearly 500 entries. The whole thing apparently got kicked off with a link to some old character proposals by Andi Watson (buy all his books, too). Favorite so far: Jeff Rowland, reminding us that even superheroes need some “alone time”.

Seems that Gabe and Tycho had a good night with their annual Child’s Play charity dinner (scroll down to the second item). They raised over $82,000 for the night, putting them on track to raise on the order of $400,000 this year, and a three-year total of $800,000.

Now you can argue over whether this is primarily a gamer thing, but one fact puts it squarely in the “webcomics” realm: the centerpiece of last night’s auction was an appearance in Penny Arcade, which went for Twenty. Thousand. Goddamn. American. Dollars. Somebody spent the equivalent of a new car, or a year’s tuition at an Ivy League college, on one appearance in a 750×390 pixel, 24 bits of color webcomic. That is utterly batshit insane, and if I ever find the guy who dropped twenty large in such a fashion, I am going to buy him booze until he can’t stand up.

There’s been a fair amount of hand-wringing this year about how little webcomics have accomplished, about how they’re artistically bankrupt, existing only to sell t-shirts, and how gamer comics and their readers suck (wade through the text, if you dare). You know what? Screw that. If this is how webcomics fail to get their shit together, appeal to base commercial concerns, and inspire their readers to a state of “frothing-at-the-mouth-crazy” (thanks, William G.!), then sign me up for more.

Update: According to Gabe, Child’s Play 2005 is now over $420,000 and may well crack half a million dollars this year.

Update: From Tycho:

We’re at over $420,000 already. I suppose I could exhort you to take us to $430,000, and don’t let me dissuade you, but money is still coming in from companies and sites that pitched in which will take us very near to a “cool half-mil.” My private objective was for Child’s Play to reach a million dollars in donations over three years, and it’s already done that. Of course, I say it has already done that, but it doesn’t have the power to do anything. You have done it.

If you’re part of the collective you that he’s talking about, you’re my friend.