• So applications for TopatoCon have closed, but they just opened for MICE, which is a show I keep hearing more and more good about. If you think you could arrange to be in Cambridge, MA¹ — across the river from the somewhat better-known Boston² — in the middle of October, this may be something you want to look into.
• Yeah, I know — you’re waiting until the overeager crowds have quieted down before seeing the new Avengers³, you already binged on Daredevil, and have no idea what to watch that’s comics-themed this weekend. Might I recommend STRIPPED, which has joined Netflix and is now available for convenient in-home streaming?
• So I got my copy of Cuttings in the mail yesterday, and it is expectedly gorgeous inside, but in and among the anticipated delights are some things that surprised me. One thing, however, surprised me more than anything else — more than the variety of styles and genres that Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh can work in, more than the amount of money I want to give them to see some of their as-yet-unrealized stories, more than the fact that when a wrist injury sidelined Ota’s right hand, she started drawing her comics with her left and quickly achieved mastery with it.

  And that thing is that Ota can not only draw better with her non-dominant hand than most people will ever draw period, but that there is a page included where she does gesture drawing with her right and left hands simultaneously. What the hell. You should buy all their stuff because anybody that can do that deserves your money.

Spam of the day:

Have you ever thought about creating an ebook or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog based upon on the same topics you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information.

You’ve linked to eyelash enhancers, and as I am widely reputed to have the best eyelashes in all of webcomics pseudojournalism, I don’t see why I should lend you any of my hard-won credibility on the eyelash front.

_______________
¹ Our Fair City; requiscat in pace, Tommy.

² Don’t worry about the show not being in Boston — it’s not a big college town.

³ Alternately: you couldn’t get a sitter.

Might as well not fight it.

• The top thing in webcomics, naturally, would be the unexpected reappearance of A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible’s David Hellmand and Dale Beran, this time at The Nib. A Slime To Remember is the first that we’ve seen from Beran & Hellmann (working together, that is) in 18 months or so, their third comic this decade, and the 44th overall collaborative exploration of the odder corners of their respective imaginations. It’s a good ‘un, and according to The Nib editor Matt Bors, It’s probably safe to say we’ll work together again, which hopefully means a shorter wait for the next installment.
• How about a pair of reminders of looming deadlines? Today is the final day to apply to TopatoCon, so if you want to have the most fun it is mathematically possible to have¹ this September, now’s the time to get in while you can.

  In a similar vein (albeit on the far side of the North American continent), we’re also down to the last day for artists to apply to be part of the Alaska Robotics 2015-2016 gallery exhibition season in beautiful and scenic (I mean that sincerely, it’s breathtaking) Juneau, Alaska. Quit procrastinating and get your applications in!

• I just realized that both of those application deadlines have pretty much been open for a month. Know what else has been going on for a month that probably none of you noticed?
  

  And that marks one month of not having any men in my comics on my site. I guess one or two might come back. http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/3805

  The last time we saw an actual dude in Diesel Sweeties (not counting Roger and John Stamos, who are above petty concepts like human gender) was 27 March, with Indie Rock Pete being … well, being himself. And as we all know, one appearance by Peter Gaylord Weiner is enough to suck all respect and liking for dudes out of the room, even after two consecutive days of the best dude.

  Thanks to best dude R Stevens for showing us that entertainment that features men as often as most entertainments feature women isn’t strange and off-putting (or at least, no more so than normal).

• Future happenings 1: Brad Guigar (cartooning force of nature and real-life sexy dad²) will be doing four panels at the upcoming Wizard World Philadelphia — one each day, Thursday through Sunday of next week — on webcomics and podcasting (the latter with his two sons, falling on Sunday, which is traditionally the family-friendly at most comics shows).
• Future happenings 2: Jorge Cham is into the tail end of production of his second PhD feature film with the release of the trailer. The last movie screened in more than 500 locations, on all seven continents³, so keep your eye on the film’s page for announcements as to where Cham will be bringing the sequel.

Spam of the day:

Coming out of your box can be frightening.

This piece of life advice came from a site purporting to sell Michael Kors, the most orange man this side of John Boehner. Tell you what — I’ll come out of my box when you get Kors to lay off the self-tanner.

_______________
¹ And, I suspect, several times that it is legal to have.

² [Mostly] Ladies [and a certain percentage of gentlemen], control yourselves. He’s taken.

³ Is this a good enough reason to wrangle yourself a year-long appointment on the staff of an Antarctic research facility to increase the odds that you’ll be near a screening?

Yes. Yes, it is.

• I find the best stuff via the twitterfeed of Katie Lane — lawyer extraordinaire to the creative community and explainer of legal doctrines — and even when she’s not the originator, the stuff she retweets is gold. Case in point, yesterday she was the proximate cause of seeing a tweet by K Matthew Dames that led me to what may be an invaluable resource for the everyday creator: a guide to Fair Use from the Copyright Office of the federal government.

  Specifically, it’s an index of case law and precedent, which may help you to determine if what you’re doing (or what’s being done to you) falls under the purview of Fair Use (yay!) or plain ol’ thieving (boo!). While not offering legal advice, the index:

  is designed to be user-friendly. For each decision, we have provided a brief summary of the facts, the relevant question(s) presented, and the court’s determination as to whether the contested use was fair. You may browse all of the cases, search for cases involving specific subject matter or categories of work, or review cases from specific courts. The Index ordinarily will reflect only the highest court decision issued in a case. It does not include the court opinions themselves. We have provided the full legal citation, however, allowing those who wish to read the actual decisions to access them through free online resources (such as Google Scholar and Justia), commercial databases (such as Westlaw and LEXIS), or the federal courts’ PACER electronic filing system, available at www.pacer.gov.

  In other words, it’s not for settling shit-fights where people are tossing around Wikipedia links as proof of the rightness of their claim; it may help provide a rationale to decide to fight/not fight a particular situation, or to help a lawyer (you have a lawyer, right) that doesn’t specialize in IP issues to get up to speed quickly. In any event, it’s got the potential to be broadly useful and I thought you should see it.

• Naturally, protecting your rights in your creations against infringement is made much easier when you have rights in the first place. Today’s example of a big IP factory being a complete dick and making me pig-biting mad¹ comes to us from Gerry Conway, longtime vet of the superhero mines, and how DC Comics gets to define characters as spontaneously existing without any creators who might need to get a small residual check. I particularly like the part where if DC decided that:
  

  … if [Conway] wanted to receive an equity participation contract for a character I created, I had to request one, in writing, for each character, before that character appeared in another media, because DC would refuse to make equity payments retroactively.

  By a rough guesstimate, I probably created over five hundred characters for DC between 1969 and 1985…. Unless I’m willing to commit a large chunk of my life to tracking down each character and filing a separate equity request in anticipation that somehow, some day, one of these characters might end up on a TV show, I risk being cut off from any share in the fruits DC enjoys from the product of my labor.

  Which serves as notice to DC that they have to go to the trouble of writing Conway a letter to declare that he didn’t in fact create the character; they don’t even crank up the bullshit excuse generator unless they’re notified to do so, in writing, in advance. That’s not just evil as hell, it’s lazy, and over amounts that to a behemoth like Warner Bros are trivial:

  Yes, money is involved, but thanks to the way DC and Warners structure their in-house deals, the actual payout for the use of a character on an episode of The Flash or Arrow is ridiculously small. (I receive an average of $47 for each appearance of Felicity Smoak, for example; nothing to sneeze at, of course, but I’m not gonna be buying any mansions with my comic book character profits anytime soon.)

  Did I say trivial? I meant lost in the roundoff errors that result when a WB executive decides to fund his hookers-and-coke expenses under “Craft Services”.

• Let us end on a happier note. Despite getting priced out of their location by San Francisco’s super-expensive real estate market, the Cartoon Art Museum isn’t spending their last few weeks on Mission Street moping around; they’re out there creating new traditions when less committed people might be starting to pack up the gift shop and send the art off to storage.

  Specifically, they’re launching the inaugural San Francisco Comics Fest, running from this Sunday (3 May, the day after Free Comic Book Day) to the following Saturday (10 May). Events will be taking place throughout the city, including workshops, meetups, talks by prominent comics creators, figure drawing, and a dance party; many of these will be free, and all of them can be found on the calendar page.

  I actually love the timing of all of this — if CAM is about to lose its home, the very best thing it can do is go big and show its hometown how indispensable it is. As a reminder, you can help shorten the downtown that hits at the end of June by donating to the CAM capital campaign and helping to fund their new home.

Spam of the day:

Download Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Movie.

Jeez man, why would you even send me such a thing? Do I come to your house and take a dump on the middle of the floor?

________________
¹ One of many colorful intensifiers I recall from faithfully reading columnist Ed Anger (“American”) in the Weekly World News back when it was a printed paper. I miss ol’ Ed.

Welp, the Eisner Award nominations are out, and the thing that jumped out at me is how thoroughly web-/indy comics creators have entered the mainstream; they are competing head-to-head against some of the most revered creators of traditional publishers, and against some of the most well-known creations. Let’s go down the list.

First and foremost would be Bandette, which aside from a nod in the Best Digital/Web Comic category (about which more in a bit), was also nominated for Best Continuing Series (going head to head against the likes of Saga and Hawkeye), and artist Colleen Coover’s nomination for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art). Similarly, Emily Carroll’s as-yet online-only When the Darkness Presses is up for Best Short Story against works featuring these obscure guys named “Bat-man” and “Su-per-man”; Carroll also took a nomination for Through the Woods as Best Graphic Album — Reprint. It happens a little more each year: an online work competes directly against print comics, and it’s an encouraging trend.

The other multiple nominee I wanted to mention is Lumberjanes (newly ensconced on the New York Times bestseller list for their first collected edition, by the bye) for Best New Series and Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17), with LJ co-writer Noelle Stevenson also nominated for Best Digital/Web Comic for Nimona. And since that’s two of the webcomics nominees listed, let’s continue and acknowledge the rest:

• Bandette
• Nimona
• Failing Sky by Dax Tran-Caffee
• The Last Mechanical Monster, by Brian Fies (winner a decade ago for Mom’s Cancer, recently returned as a serializing webcomic)
• The Private Eye by Brian Vaughan & Marcos Martin

As in past years, the category is a bit of a mish-mash, with The Private Eye and Bandette being comic-booky where Failing Sky, Last Mechanical Monster, and Nimona release page-at-time; Bandette is sold via comiXology, the others release on their own websites. There’s not much overlap between format or genre, with all five being united solely by dint of the fact they release online first. Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad, but it’s still restricted to whatever the judges decide counts as long form work, and that maybe should be reconsidered. Regardless, all strong work in the category this year.

That being said, it wouldn’t be the Eisners without a What the hell? moment or two, and for me that came when I noticed a complete lack of webcomics in the Best Humor Publication (where they are often represented) and a lack of both Sisters and Amulet in any of the younger readers categories. In the case of the former, it’s hard to argue when you do get nominations for Cul de Sac and Groo; in the latter, Raina Telgemeier was nominated as Best Writer/Artist, which is arguably better. There are still people out there that regard works for younger readers as somehow lesser; that’s a garbage argument, but to the extent that some perceive it as a ghetto, Telgemeier isn’t being pigeonholed. She’s competing against the best across the entire swathe of comics, including grand masters like Stan Sakai and Sergio Aragonés. Still nothing for Kazu Kibuishi, so I’ve got that to complain about.

But let us finish up on a happy note: Gene Luen Yang is up for Best Writer, both for his Avatar tie-in comic at Dark Horse, and his own The Shadow Hero, and the Tamaki cousins were recognized for This One Summer as Best Graphic Album — New; collectively they’ll be facing competition including Jules Feiffer, Brian K Vaughn, Kelly Sue DeConnick, G Willow Wilson, and Grant Morrison. Webcomics creators (and webcomics veterans) aren’t just being compared to each other, they’re being compared to the best alive. It’s a good year for the community.

The Eisner Awards will be given out Friday, 10 July, at San Diego Comic Con; best of luck to all the nominees.

Spam of the day:

1. Don’t continue putting off your lifestyle change.

Let’s see — wife, dog, house, volunteer work, and the opportunity to opinion-mong on a regular basis? My lifestyle’s jammin’, Sparky.

Mostly about books, today. Mostly.

• I have a correction to make; yesterday I made mention of the new Girl Genius Kickstarter campaign, which I said had launched overnight. From looking at the Kicktraq data, it appears that it actually launched ten days prior, and the Foglios were unusually quiet about it; the soft launch ended when they messaged backers of prior Kickstarter campaigns, and what I thought was a hundred grand of progress in a day was actually the result of a week and a half. The soft launch also produced the weirdest funding trendline I’ve ever seen, along with a multi-peak daily data graph. Regardless, they’re well over goal, have maxed out the stretch goals, and there’s a mention of new ones coming soon.

  Soft launches, man. Confusing.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, I am surprised to see that The Best Book has moved from a small but respectable 6% funded day-after-launch (15 April, as discussed here) to a not very encouraging 15% funded a week in. Guys. A Paul Southworth-illustrated kids book about the joys of reading is in danger of not funding and I feel this is partially my fault for not hyping it sufficiently.

  Consider it hyped, and consider this a call to action — the youngest readers (slash-listeners, since this is pitched at the real young’uns) will not discover a love of books on their own; they must be taught and trained and raised right and if this book doesn’t succeed, every single one of you will be contributing to the future decline of reading. Get backing, get talking.

• From the That’s A Relief department: Ursula Vernon and her travel companions have returned from their sojourn in Africa, with magnificent animals seen, adventure embedded firmly in brains for eventual sharing, and the Life List just a wee bit longer¹. What struck me about Vernon’s first writeup of the experience (apart from the fact that the well known Weirdness Field that surrounds her did not result in her being named Queen of the Were-aardvarks or some such) is a discussion she had with her guide about the hegemony of language:
  

  “There is no word,” he explained. “Not in Setswana. We say water bird, but then we use the English, kingfisher.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “There isn’t a word. Okay.”

  He frowned down at the paper. “Ah … there is a book. In eighteen-hundred, a man went all around Botswana and collected all the Setswana words. If you look in that book, there may be a word. But we do not know the word now. It is …” He trailed off, waving the tip of the pen in that I-am-trying-to-think-of-a-word motion (which may not be completely universal, but seems to hold up pretty well between Botswana and here.)

  “Lost?” I suggested after a minute.

  “Lost. Yes. There was a word, I think. It is lost.” He handed me back the paper.

  I felt a pang of guilt, as if my native language was a dog that had bitten his. English sheds words constantly, of course, but usually not to replace them with someone else’s. And Setswana is a language with many, many native speakers — Wikipedia says over five million — and on no one’s list of endangered languages. Many of the parks were named in Setswana, and he’d told us both the common Setswana names of animals and sometimes the word in the regional dialect. But here I’d stumbled onto a word that had simply slipped away and been replaced by English.

  If that bit of sic transit gloria mundi is too much to contemplate, Vernon’s latest middle-grades book — Castle Hangnail — is out today, and thus you may cheer yourself up with a copy of that.

• Finally, happy birthday to two of the most original, relentlessly cheerful gentlemen in webcomics or any other endeavour: Chris Yates and Frank Gibson were both born this day, and that makes this a Good Day.

Spam of the day:

if you decide on the wrong people or company to help you out in loan mod, you happen to be putting your loan along with your you will find greater danger.

Why yes complete stranger with a partial command of the language of international finance, I would very much like to trust you with a high-value loan modification. In other news, deposed Nigerian princes like me.

_______________
¹ And by wee bit, I mean 154 new birds.

Answer: seven days of class material in five days. One may understand that I’ll be somewhat … brief this week.

• New TopatoCon announcement du jour: Dante Shepherd, imitator of raptors¹, wielder of mallets, teacher of the young, record-holder for chalk concentration in the blood of an alive human. Be sure to shout Woo, Yankees! when you see him.
• New Kickstarter for Girl Genius went up in the wee hours, already sitting at 155% of its US$60,000 goal and less than US$250 from its last stretch goal. Good thing too, as it’s only running for eleven days. Of perhaps equal interest is the fact that while this is the 14th (!) volume of Agatha Heterodyne’s adventures, Pr & Pr Foglio have created a story break to serve as a jumping-on point and renumbered back down to one — the better to not scare off new readers, presumably. We’ll see over the next few years if that worked in their favor but whatever — I cleared space on my bookshelves for up to 25 Girl Genius collections years ago.
• It appears that the indications we had on Friday that the contact form isn’t working have been borne out — Steve Troop dropped into the comments to let us know that he also had a no-result experience. It’s on my list of things to do, but for the meantime I’ll put a note on the contact page. Thanks for letting me know.

Spam of the day:

Woman of Alien [emphasis original]

I’m not sure what this one is getting at? Are they trying to sell me alien women? Or do the aliens — perhaps from Mars? — need women? Help me out here.

_______________
¹ Now we need to have a Science And YOU! presentation at TopatoCon, where Shepherd can share the stage with Randall Munroe, who has a well-known fear of raptors; put Munroe on a treadmill with Shepherd hissing behind him, we can power the entire venue.

(more…)

It appears that come June, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco will have to go vagabond for while, as it is being forced by circumstance to find a new location:

Following a notice to vacate, the Cartoon Art Museum will be closing its doors at 655 Mission Street on Sunday, June 28, 2015. The museum, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, began preparing several months ago for a possible relocation and will now continue those efforts in search of temporary gallery space as well as a new long-term home.

Well, poop. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, CAM is a great museum that puts up some great shows, and I imagine that at least half the effort of finding new space will be to find an appropriate place to keep and protect their collection — from the Smithsonian on down to the smallest, museums have more in storage than on display.

This has the unfortunate effect of making museum spaces expensive, what with requiring specific climate parameters to keep the collection from damage plus requiring nice, spacious, well-lit, and transformable space for all the public aspects. And San Francisco is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, which likely contributed to the requirement to move; no doubt their landlord can make a boatload of money by chopping up the space into fancy retail, restaurant, and/or residential units.

So if anybody wins the lottery and doesn’t have anything better to do with a couple-ten million dollars (or even just a couple of bucks), you can contribute to CAM’s capital campaign.

In better news:

• KC Green let us know that his various comics projects might be a little less regular than expected for a month or so, for what I would call excellent reasons:
  

  I am doing a freelance gig with Adventure Time the cartoon series that will take up more than most of my time. Maybe. I am preparing you in case I miss an update or two. Just for the month. I suddenly have a lot of things I am doing at once and a plate or two might fall. Nothing serious tho, we can glue the plate back together.

  I can’t wait to see what a Green-designed or inspired episode of Adventure Time would look like, and on top of that, the Weird Al-edited issue of MAD due out next week (#533, if you’re keeping track) will include laugh-chuckles from KC, which means that Weird Al saw his comics and liked them. I believe that is the definition of professional validation.

• Speaking of KC Green, he was the first announced guest of TopatoCon, which has made its latest pair of guest announcements:
  

  *holds out fists* ok pick a hand

  Left, you say?

  Or did you say right?

  For those that didn’t click through, those tweets led to the names of Danielle Corsetto and David Malki !. The full list of guests is behind the cut.

• Still speaking of KC, he appears as a computer-generated pal for you (at least, a person named KC, along with other suspiciously webcomics-associated names as Sara, Anthony, Holly, Eliza, Frank, Becky, Tony, Karla, Erika, Jess, Eric, Kate, and more) in the latest Twine game from Tom McHenry, the man responsible for teaching us all the mastery of horses.

  Let’s Go Eat is a (specific type not stated, but pretty clearly comics) convention simulator wherein you must wrangle a crowd of people to dinner, when everybody has preferences and dislikes and it is possible to have your group break up due to hunger, impatience, attrition, and actual starvation death. It is absolutely 100% true to life and I encourage everybody to play it to learn why your favorite creators are that way by the end of the day.

• We’ll finish out the week on a logistical and oddly KC-less note; the following comment was received on the last post I made about an arts space losing its location (way the heck back on Tuesday), regarding a bit of spam and not being able to find the contact page:
  

  To be fair to the spammer, I did use that Contact Us link on two different occasions the past few months, with no indication that anything had happened.

  Duly noted, and thanks for letting us know, Andrew; in the meantime, you can always reach me by utilizing the name gary, which is reachable at the name of this here site. I’m still not apologizing to that spamming bastard, though.

Spam of the day:

Helklo there, You have done an incredible job. I’ll certainly digg it and personally suggest too my friends.

Honest question: is Digg still a thing? I’m not sure it’s a thing.

(more…)

There are towering institutions in the realm of {indy | web}comics and allied forces of creativity; we’ll note some goings-on with three of them today.

• The ToonSeum has been a part of the rebirth of Pittsburgh’s arts district, as well as honoring the legacy of a wide swath of the comics arts. It takes a lot to keep an organization like that running, so if you’re in Western PA, consider dropping by their annual fundraiser, Ka-Blam!, on 25 April at the Teamsters Temple Banquet Hall in Lawrenceville.

  In keeping with a mission that honors not just cartoons but also its hometown, this year’s Ka-Blam! theme is Pittsburgh Characters, meaning prominent Pittsburghers (Pittsburghians? Pittsburgundians? Pittsburghasques?) will be honored, meaning you can watch people remember the greatest human of the recent common era: Mister Rogers.

• On the far side of the North American continent sits another institution that preserves, popularizes, teaches about, and studies the comic arts: the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. It’s a very active place, with programs out the proverbial wazoo, including a particularly rich and lively cluster in the immediate future. This Sunday, 19 April, will be the monthly Sunday Storytime Hour (theme: bunnies!) from 11:00am to noon.

  A scant hour later at 1:00pm, there will be hosted demo of Mangaka: The Fast and Furious Game of Drawing Comics until 4:00pm. And in a few weeks on 7 May, CAM hosts their annual fundraiser/comedy showcase, Comics 4 Comix. On the off chance none of those programs suits your fancy, there’s still a whole museum to enjoy, with a current exhibition of the films of Cartoon Saloon.

• Coming back to the Eastern Time Zone to finish, you have an institution that is unlike the other two; one that is interested in the art and creators of comics, but in the tangible approach of directly supporting them in their efforts (not to mention their ability to pay for things like rent and food). An institution that exists in a compact, moveable (indeed, in near perpetual motion) form that is responsible for facilitating more than ten million dollars of support directly to various creators.

  I speak, naturally, of George, who condensed from an aether of pure consciousness into our world of meat and sorrow on this day in the year of our greatest hope; who took on physical form to better help us; who causes reality to shift around himself to aid those who put forth the effort to better their skills and create good works. Let us honor him on this, the anniversary of his birth, with the traditional gifts of spreadsheets, cool glasses, friendship, and Big Gay Ice Cream. Happy Georgeday, everybody!

Spam of the day:

We have Excellent work from home Option , where you will get steady Income source here No Target No Limitation,

Curiously enough, I already have that, and from a company whose checks don’t bounce.

Just yesterday I was raving about the gallery/event space known as Center 548, site of this year’s MoCCA Festival in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City, and how I hoped the Society of Illustrators had found a new, permanent home for the show. Turns out, nope:

Sad news for anybody who is currently enjoying MoCCA’s new location https://news.artnet.com/art-world/owne…

In case you didn’t click that link, the owners of the building has sold out to a new landlord who intends to — wait for it — build condos, or so say the rumors. I’m sure somebody will be making a buttload of money off the deal, and while I’ve only ever been in that space on one day of its entire existence, the continual repurposing of NYC real estate into high-priced residences is something that will set off another cycle of decline in the city if the real estate industry isn’t very careful.

It’s happened before, as the city became too expensive and people moved away; pretty soon there’s nobody to cook and clean for the owners of those multi-million dollar residences, or to make their coffee or deliver their dry cleaning. Then the super rich all decide to leave, the neighborhood falls into underuse, and then the artists and squatters move back in. Cue one of those Disney songs about eternal circles of real property valuation. Thanks to Darryl Ayo for digging up the story.

• Welp, regardless of what happens with arts happenings in New York, there’s still going to be a TopatoCon in *hampton Mass this fall, and the exhibitor list grows by the day:
  

  Can you guess who the next guest announcement is? I’ll give you a hint; his name rhymes with “Schmanthony Slark”.

  I’m going to throw another guest announcement at you. Go long!

  IT’S CHRIS HASTINGS! @drhastings IS GOING TO BE AT TOPATOCON!!

  The complete list as it now stands is under the cut.

• That’s moving fast — Howard Tayler¹ has been making noise about launching a Kickstarter to fund a role-playing game set in his comic’s universe, and in the hours since launch it’s racked up 66% of of a US$45,000 goal. Not so unusual, but these things are unusual: the US$30K he’s gathered so far is from just 300 backers, for an average of a hundo per; he’s logged eight backers (out of total limit of 15) across two US$500 tiers, and five (out of a limit of 10) backers at the US$1000 (!) tier. People love them some games, but even more love them some Howard. No idea where this is going but I suspect all my predictive models would be garbage given the obvious skew going on.
• How about a simple Kickstarter story? It’s been a while since we had one of thems. Dave Kellett has decided to celebrate the first anniversary of his film, STRIPPED (funded via Kickstarts), with a sale. Until 17 April, you can get the movie and bonus features for 50% off. If you didn’t see it before, see it now.

Spam of the day:

Does your website have a contact page? I’m having a tough time locating it but, I’d like to send yyou an e-mail.

Yeah, it would be that thing under the masthead on the right that says CONTACT US, can’t imagine how anybody’s ever found it ever.

_______________
¹ Evil twin, etc.

(more…)

Although I was only able to attend on Saturday, I’m prepared to call MoCCA Festival 2015 a success: the new venue was airy and light-filled (if a bit daunting), the location of the panel discussions was fancy — schmancy, even — and the weather was beautiful. Okay, that last one wasn’t up to the Society of Illustrators, but it was a bit of good luck, as the exhibit venue and the panel locale were about five minutes walk apart and if it had been an April-in-New York spitty, squally, rainy day, that would have been a miserable five minutes.

Center 548, the replacement for the Armory of the past four-five years, is arranged vertically rather than horizontally; in practice this means a few things:

• There was one hell of a steep, narrow staircase to navigate as soon as you enter to get up to the second through fourth floors
• The crowds marginally thinned out as you went upwards¹
• I’m told there was a rooftop lounge, which I never found but many I’m envious of those that did

Along with the aforementioned light and windows and blue skies; it felt old and new simultaneously inside, not unlike the onetime location of the Puck Building (presently spending its day as an REI store and a bunch of Starbuckses).

The High Line Hotel (formerly some famous dude’s home, laid out like an Ivy League quad with courtyards and vaguely connected subsections and echoing staircases that feel like they should be in a cathedral) hosted the panels in a pair of rooms that featured stylish, minimal decor (I felt like I was in a very tasteful Scandinavian loft apartment) with enormous stained-glass windows; okay, they were covered by shades, but they were still stained glass.

Accenting the Chelsea vibe, the courtyard entrance of the hotel was hosting a small marketplace aimed at fashionable dogs and the people that care for them, so there were corgis in tutus and handbag foofoo pooches to add a little color.

Oh, and there were comics, too.

• Evan Dahm and I discussed what classics he might work on after Moby-Dick (as I got to thumb through a sample copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), and he allowed that he’d like to tackle The Illiad and The Odyssey as a two-volume box set some day.
• Bill Roundy and I discussed the best neighborhood in Brooklyn for bars with outrageously creative drinks-mixers, as he had a half-dozen volumes of his Bar Scrawl minis to choose from, each covering a neighborhood and a dozen or more bars in more-or-less a straight line walking. He’s begun to look at the history of particular drinks and had an eight-pager about the first of them: the Floradora. He may have offered to make me one on the spot, and I may have enjoyed the hell out of it. With any luck, he’ll do one history per month.
• Raina Telgemeier (unsurprisingly) and Scott McCloud (only marginally less so) had fans in the sub-teen age range that waited through hour-long Qs and As to talk to them — the next generation of comics is in good hands.
• Tom Siddell and Magnolia Porter tabling together is remarkably convenient if you want to talk to the greatest concentration of webcomics talent without having to walk any further than absolutely necessary; as mentioned previously, both are on career-best streaks right now, both are sending characters in new directions that will change their respective statuses quo, and both are (fortunately) getting more positive feedback than negative for their choices.
• I was lucky to make the acquaintance of Carey Pietsch, who is illustrating from Meredith Gran&rsquo’s scripts for the newest Marceline miniseries from Boom!; as I told her, I love Gran’s words and pictures, but I think that writing for another artist (and doing so in a way that shows off her strengths), I think that she’s sharpened her writing skills even further. They’re a good creative team, and I’d be interested to see them collaborate again in the future on a story that they own.
• It is impossible to get past the adoring crowds to Scott C; dude was swamped every time I went by.

The only real negative I can think of is that the floor was pretty loud; the Armory had that problem too, but it was greatly improved the last couple of years when tall drapes were put behind tables to cut down on echo. Drop those into Center 548² and I think you’ve got a great MoCCA Fest venue for the foreseeable future.

The MoCCA Festival was on shaky ground for a couple of years, but since the SoI took over, it seems to be assured of a successful future; I’m not sure how you can do everything that they do with a door price of five dollars, but I’m impressed that they do. See you there next year.

Spam of the day:

Zune and iPod: Most people compare the Zune to the Touch, but after seeing how slim and surprisingly small and light it is

You lie. It’s been mathematically proved that nobody ever owned a Zune.

_______________
¹ This may have been an illusion, as it appeared the aisles were narrower on the second floor than the third and fourth — presumably to make room for the food service and Wacom lounge. Speaking of which, the food service was tasty, plentifully-supplied, and fast, but there needed to be places to sit and eat. Had I known about the rooftop lounge, that would have been a different story.

² Also find a way to completely retrofit staircases that are less vertiginous; easy, right?