It’s Events Day at the Fleen Ranch, so break out the dayplanner and gas up the car, you got some places to be. While you’re waiting for the tank to fill and the GPS to get your directions together, Rich Stevens dropped some wisdom last night, followed by the mic. Check it:

Do you want to make webcomics?

OK, great. You need two traits. One or the other, you will fail at my definition of webcomics in the professional sense.

1.) You need to find joy in variations on a theme, even if the theme is “your imagination.” You will hopefully be doing this task thousands and thousands of times. Enjoy it, love it, do it for the right reasons.

2.) You will need a gleeful, hateful, beautiful endurance. Avoid drama and destroy all your enemies by being solidly there for your fans. Save your heckling for the graves of misogynists.

The end. [boldface original]

Something to ponder while you make your way around the country.

• The every-three-years Festival of Cartoon Art kicks off tomorrow in Columbus, Ohio on the campus of Ohio State; the formal festival is full up, but some associated events have individual admission tickets still available, at the FCA page linked just above. One thing that’s sold out entirely will be the STRIPPED screening; just think: three years ago STRIPPED co-creator Dave Kellett did a keynote presentation, which opened doors for a lot of the interviews in the movie he’s now sharing … what new project will the screening enable? For those of you (including me) not able to attend the FCA this year (which is pretty much the entire world, minus the 275 registrations that the FCA allows), time to start making plans for Fall, 2016.
• While you’re making those plans for 2016 (or maybe 2019), maybe head east on I-70 for a few hours to Pittsburgh, where our old friend The Toonseum will be holding its third Bad Movie Night tomorrow at 7:00pm; as is tradition, the name of the movie will not be announced until the audience is seated and unable to escape. Admission is US$10 (five bucks for members) and the event is 18 and up.
• Rumblings have been made on the nets that serial troublemakers Danielle Corsetto and Randy Milholland may be about to spring a new iteration of ComfyCon on an unsuspecting world. The original ComfyCon, as you may recall, took place last year during San Diego Comic Con, for those creators and fans that could not (or perhaps would not) attend the much more hectic show by the Pacific Ocean; taking place online, it was well received by all concerned.

  ComfyCon II: The Comfying is still on for this weekend, and the quiet launch will make it all the more exciting when we see all involved, both event- and people-wise. Notifications may come with short lead times, so follow the twitters of your favorite webcomickers to be sure not to miss anything.

• Finally, what’s likely the last webcomics-related event of the calendar yet, Webcomics Rampage 2013 rolls into Austin Texas early next month, with an all-new, all-larger, all-louder THREE! THREE! THREE! days of webcomics maaaaayheeemmmmm.

Happy Halloween, kids! Try not to rot your teeth out by the weekend.

• November is shaping up to be a momentous month, as it’s finally been announced when Jeff Smith’s new webcomic will be launching. As previously noted, Tüki Save The Humans [that link may just be a placeholder; we’ll all find out together in a couple of weeks] will be about the first human to leave Africa for the wider world, and it’s been in the planning stages for a very long time (Smith’s wife and publisher, Vijaya Iyer, was dropping hints as long ago as SDCC 2012). Working in a share-first, print-later model will be a big change for Smith, and his shift to the webcomic model will represent perhaps the biggest name in dead-tree comics to take a flyer on our weird little community.

  In any event, Tüki will be unveiled in a 10 November brunch at the Society of Illustrators in New York, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (Smith has been a long-time supporter of the Fund), which you can attend in exchange for a donation to the CBLDF. You’ve got US$100 general admission tickets (US$40 of which is tax deductible), and for those that want to get up close and in-person with Smith, there’s the US$250 VIP ticket (US$190 deductible). Drat and darn, about the time the program starts at noon I’ll be at the airport getting ready to depart for Wildest Iowa for work, or I would most likely be there, because Jeff’s great, the Society is great, the CBLDF is great, and I have a feeling that Tüki is going to be great as well.

• For those that can’t be in New York on the tenth, how about Pittsburgh on the ninth? The Toonseum will be holding a memorial service for Lou Scheimer, the recently-departed animation impresario and co-founder of Filmation. For those that were too young to catch Filmation in its heyday on Saturday mornings, or perhaps after school, the animation was basic, limited, featured a lot of re-used stock footage, and was pretty often in the service of not particularly great shows.

  He also made sure that Filmation’s work was never sent overseas and was a major contributor to keeping animation jobs and skills in America. There’s a lot of animators today that grew up watching Filmation’s various shows, and they’ve been the teachers and inspirations of at least one more generation. Scheimer was a Pittsburgh native, as well as a supporter and booster of The Toonseum, where a gallery is named in his honor. The memorial is open to the public, and will run from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.

• On the off chance that you’re having trouble keeping track of all these dates, can I suggest you invest in a webcomic-themed calendar? Okay, the offerings from Jorge Cham and Brad Guigar might only start in January, 2014 … but if you’d bought one last year, you’d have someplace to note your Pittsburgh or New York comics-themed events right now, wouldn’t you? Don’t let that happen to you next year.

It’s just like squirrels; if you see one, there’s probably others lurking around.

• Congratulations to Darren J Gendron, creator of many webcomics and webcomics-adjacent projects, who reports this morning:
  

  As of 6:32 a.m., we have the arrival of one Montgomery Ironwill Gendron, weighing 6 pounds, 15 ounces. Mommy and Monty are doing fine.

  Those clicking on the link will find that this time that photo is of a cleaned-up and suitable for the Amiden Great-Aunt baby, so that’s good. Also, if Young Master Gendron’s middle name actually is Ironwill, that is totally badass¹; considering that Monty’s big brother is named Franklin Powers Gendron, there’s an excellent chance of badassery.

  Also, Jesse Thorn² tweeted a little while ago:

  Oscar Thorn was born this morning at 3:45. He and @TheresaThorn are healthy and beautiful and amazing.

  Considering that the Thorns are west coasters, that would be about fifteen minutes after Ironwill entered the world. One is forced to conclude two things:

  1. Man, Jesse really didn’t want to get a dog.
  2. These babies are coming closer and closer together; the (last we saw) tremendously preggers Rene Engström has probably had five babies as a result of all this prompting.
• Know who’s had a lot of overlap with Jesse and Theresa Thorn, particularly vis-à-vis multiple iterations of MaxFunCon? David Malki !. Despite being busier than twelve ordinary humans trying to determine the optimal delivery method of the Machine of Death game, he also ends up with ideas that must be dealt with immediately.

  Let’s be clear, that beard-related idea occurred yesterday; the shirt is available for order today. And for the process nerds among you, Malki ! has shared a very nice writeup of how the design was constructed, possibly as an excuse to talk about a favorite (free) design tool.

• How do you know you’ve arrived? Make a ridiculously implausible comic, then hours later have the premise confirmed by the frighteningly smart and capable people you’re spoofing. Mr Weinersmith, I believe that Stockholm is on the line with news of your Nobel.

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¹ Not to mention unlikely to be duplicated once he ends up in class with all the Jadens and Jaydens and Jaedons.

² He doesn’t do a webcomic, but the Maximum Fun empire is a client of Mr I Am Made of Poison, and he has followed the independent creator give it away/monetize the back end model for years, so he counts.

Pretty much good news across the board today, in fact.

• Word comes from New England today, that Paul Southworth (late of Ugly Hill, currently of Not Invented Here) is part of a special event that one might choose to remember every 24th of October for the forseeable future:
  

  ITS A GIRL! Eloise Karin Southworth is 8lbs 5oz and everyone is doing great! http://instagram.com/p/f2l3CNp3tM/

  Those clicking on the link should be aware that it features an alive human child moments after its emergence into the world, and not looking like the angelic baby with the beatifically-reposed mother that might feature in the birth announcement you send to your maiden great-aunt. There’s vernix¹, and a full-throated protest at being dragged into a noisy, bright, cold world, and it looks like a lot of wriggling and pinking-up and you know what? She’s gorgeous. Congrats to Eloise, her two big brothers, mom and dad, and sincere hopes that every day just gets better for them all.²

• One of the things that Chris Hastings mentioned as an upcoming project during his NYCC panel was a Dr McNinja-themed card game. It was all designed, he had a prototype at home, and everybody that came to visit got to play it and nobody said it was less than lots of fun. The Kickstarter would be starting in the near future.

  In this case, “near future” meant yesterday, and it (that is to say, Dr McNinja’s Legendary Showdown) is already funded. What I found most interesting about DMLS (I’m afraid that it simply demands boldfacing) is the first stretch goal of the campaign, which is not based on a dollar figure, but on backer involvement.

  In case you can’t read that image up top, it says:

  2,500 Facebook shares or #LegendaryShowdown tweets
  NEW CHARACTER CARD

  I don’t recall at the moment another campaign tying content to the breadth of discussion of the project in question; it’s a damn clever idea, since that many tweets and shares puts the game in front of more potential backers. I’ll be watching this one very carefully. If I could make one suggestion to the project runners at Killer Robot Games³, maybe they want to also count Kicktraq shares? Just spitballing here.

• Not new, per se, but still good news — per the comments on yesterday’s post, Sinfest is having website issues, but Tatsuya Ishida is posting updates on the forums (yesterday, today). Hopefully the main page will sort itself out soon, but in the meantime, there’s still comics and that’s all right.

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¹ Look it up.

² Although if Southworth is good at his job as father, today will mark the last time his daughter is naked on the internet.

³ Couldn’t find a website for them, on account of the words “killer robot” spawn a lot of matches in Google.

Some things go exactly as you expect; anybody could have told you when PAXEast registrations went live today, the tickets site (and the hotels site, for that matter) were gonna get hammered like the Obamacare site on launch day. Seems to have sorted itself out, in the sense that much of the registration and hotel inventory are now spoken for. Have fun in Boston, y’all.

• One thing that’s been pretty much constant for a really long damn time is that every morning, there will be a new update at Sinfest. Love it or hate it (or, given that it’s about five different strips in one, love parts and hate other parts), Tatsuya Ishida’s strip is something you can practically set your watch by — checking the archive, the last break in the daily schedule I can find was the several weeks long gap between 14 June and 10 July of 2006. More than 2600 days in an unbroken streak followed until today.

  Not that Ishida (who is quiet and not well-known in webcomics circles) owes us an update or anything — it’s just that when a long-established pattern suddenly changes, it sure as hell catches your eye. Fleen hopes that all is well with Ishida and thanks him for all of the free comics to date, and appreciates him in advance for any that he creates in the future.

• More than seven years of an update streak is a pretty big number, and here’s another: 1,254,120, which readers may recall as the number of United Sates Dollars raised by Rich Burlew in his record-shattering Kickstarter campaign last year¹. I’m bringing Burlew and his campaign up because he emailed me regarding The Lando Effect (as described by Rich Stevens yesterday) and declaring it the reason that said Kickstart became such a huge success:
  

  I just wanted to point out that the Lando Effect that you mentioned in yesterday’s column is exactly what powered my Kickstarter project. The initial pitch included a bonus digital story about the history of a secondary character, and also allowed three backers to buy additional stories about any character they chose that would then be distributed to all backers. As the drive went on, I added more side stories with each goal hit … So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  In case you didn’t have a reason to believe Stevens, Burlew has given you one-point-two million more reasons, and also ascribes to the “side story” model the success of his print collections that pre-date the Kickstart. Just don’t ignore his last line, which we’ll repeat here with a little emphasis added:

  So, yeah, it absolutely does work, as long as your audience is invested in the series as a whole and the chosen character is compelling enough in their main story appearances to pique interest.

  Also, try not to have near-career-ending injuries at any time; if you find yourself on the cusp of having a near-career-ending injury, just imagine Burlew standing a meter or so in front of you, sadly but firmly shaking his head and silently mouthing the word No.

• Finally, it’s Wednesday, and that means it’s Charles Christopher day², and for those of you that have always wondered Hey, Karl Kerschl lives in Montréal, when will we be able to read Charles Christopher in French?, the answer is Real damn soon now, Sparky:
  

  The first volume of The Abominable Charles Christopher has been translated for the French market by my pals at Studio Lounak! It’s their first publication and it’s a beautiful hardcover volume with a spot-gloss on the lettering.

  It’s available through a number of retailers and you can buy it now from werehouse.ca, which also stocks my other books, as well as books by Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Cameron Stewart.

  This is the first of many such volumes, and hopefully more translations!

  Given how non-culturally-specific TACC is, I’m not surprised at all to see that Kerschl’s pushing for translations — there’s a world of people who would read these gorgeous, heartfelt comics in other languages, and I hope that they spread the word far and wide in their respective linguistic communities. My French is extremely spotty³ so I think I’ll give this one a miss, even though it comes with an exclusive bookplate that looks pretty gorgeous.

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¹ Which resulted in a creative-production and fulfillment job that would send most rational people into a fetal ball o’ panic, and give rise to serious thoughts of taking the money and fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Burlew continues to make progress (hampered as he was not only by the scope and scale, but also by a near-career-ending injury 13 months ago) and has set the standard for communicating progress made on the many aspects of fulfillment via his brilliantly-designed Workometer.

² Also weekly computer maintenance day, but maybe that’s just me?

³ When traveling, I count myself lucky if I can use the local language to get a train ticket, a hotel room, and a beer. I’ve managed that so far in Czech, French, Dutch, and Japanese, but I only “studied” one of those for four years in high school. Oh, and when I speak French, I have a tendency to drift into other languages, including on one particularly embarrassing occasion outside of Antwerp, tlhIngan Hol.

If you find any broken links or missing photos in posts, do let me know; I think that I’ve got everything fixed for the current calendar year, and will be working my way back through older posts as I encounter them. Yay, hosting! Also, while I’m thinking about it, something about shifting hosting just brings the spammers out in full force — in the past 48 hours I’ve had to clear more spam out of the filters than the previous two weeks; for some reason, they’re really attached to this old post regarding the SPLAT! Symposium back in March 2008. No idea why it’s so attractive to people that really want me to buy fancy shoes.

Okay, it’s late, let’s do this:

• Congrats to Krishna Sadasivam on 15 years of PCs, Weenies, and PC Weenies.
• Big thanks to the USPS for bringing me a copy of Skin Horse book 4 (which continues the tradition of the previous volumes of somehow ramping up the crazy and loopy and the ha-ha to ever-new heights).
• For those of you with RSS feeds, there’s one that you really should be on, courtesy of the very sexy R Stevens; Perpetual Edge Case is not where you go for pixel comics, it’s where you go for philosophical musings when they occur, and when they do they’re full of mad wisdom. I’m going to quote liberally (that is to say, in its entirety, because you need to read it) from the one that dropped yesterday, entitled The Lando Effect:
  

  Free games with in-app purchases are apparently the One True Way to make money off indie games. I can’t find the articles I read that I got that from, so I hope you’ll indulge me for the length of this email.

  The point is that people more easily spend money on stuff inside a game than they do paying a small amount up-front for the game. You’re more likely to buy zombie-fighting upgrades to your Plants or Mighty Eagles for when you get frustrated by Angry Birds than you are to spend $10 for the game itself. (I am the opposite, but what else is new?)

  As someone who’s kinda been doing that with free comics that eventually translate into merchandise sold to 1-2% of readers, that makes a lot of sense to me.

  But what about in-app purchases *inside comics*?

  Let’s take Scott Pilgrim for example. It’s a dumb-kid-hero-quest-romance narrative with a clear line between lost boy and the boss characters he needs to defeat to find love and be a “man”. (I’m being extremely reductionist here.) But what makes the series special are all the side characters. What if such a book came out today for free as a digital series? How would you make a living off it?

  If you were selling it to me, you’d offer the story in a free serialized form with the ability to buy “side quests” to see more of characters like Wallace and Knives and Kim Pine who otherwise just come in and out of Scott’s story. Give me Scott’s story for free but sell me the Mighty Eagle of Kim Pine getting in a bar fight or Wallace going out on dates.

  The Empire Strikes Back is free, but for .99 you get an 8-minute Lando featurette showing a failed romance that ended just before the events of the movie which set him up to make a deal with Darth Vader. Twin Peaks is free, but you can give David Lynch a buck for a monthly webisode about the front desk of the Great Northern hotel or of Audrey Horne ordering pie. Spider-Man comics are free, but for 75 cents, you can follow the villains or Aunt May around for an extra 8 pages of hijinks.

  I wonder if that would work. You put some ads on the free stuff, which folks who buy the extras don’t have to see. You get readers who would never plunk down for the book itself. You get to spend more time with the fan favorites who don’t really advance the main plot. [emphasis original]

  If you don’t already subscribe to what is for all intents and purposes the Rich Stevens Conspiracy-of-One Newsletter, get on that.

That’s it for today and remember, if you need Christian Louboutins, I apparently know about twenty three guys that can set you up.

Update to add: Steven has posted the essay at The Medium.

Oh Zach Weinersmith, you scamp, you’re always making me look at things differently.

• Speaking of changes in perspective, there’s a crackerjack recap by Hurricane Erika of the talk she gave at this year’s XOXO Fest. Part bio, part perspective on life as an independent artist, part look to the future. The thing about Erika is, every time I read one of her comics, I learn something about somebody else — how they view the world, what their experiences are, how they’re different from me. I am utterly convinced that her work has made me more empathetic than I would have been otherwise. Hell, she (with co-conspirator Jeff Parker) turned a member of a feared and despised subculture into a sympathetic character without even divulging her name. She’s smart, she’s humane, and you should give it a listen.
• For reasons unknown even to myself, today’s Achewood made me think on my favorite character, Mr Cornelius Bear¹, and I got to wondering how long it had been since we’d seen him with his young paramour, Polly. Answer: It has been five years (almost exactly) since today’s sentence, the whirlwind of attraction and the dinner party at Ray’s. It has been more than four years since last we saw mention of Polly, a strip that led directly to the most Mexican Magical Realism adventure of all time, Todd’s foray into North Korea. Lots of things have changed in the four years since, but Chris Onstad’s ability to delight is not one of them.

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¹ Naturally, except for Ramses Luther Smuckles, who kicks men’s asses and votes

Just past noon on Saturday at the recently-concluded New York Comic Con, I saw (from the corner of my eye) the back of Ryan North’s head at the BOOM! booth as he was signing Adventure Time comics and I was speaking with Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota. I blinked but a moment and Ryan North was gone. You would think that a 2 meter tall man couldn’t disappear, even on a crowded show floor, but he did, as if he was never there in the first place. Filing this away for future reference¹, I said my goodbyes to Ota and Panagariya and made my way down into the bowels of the Javits Convention Center.

In the pleasantest of surprises, I found that the death crush of people moving to and from panel rooms had been largely alleviated by specific lining-up corrals, and that the hazards of years gone by were gone. I was able to walk freely to the vicinity of the line for Room 1A8, where I found Kate Beaton and Chris Hastings chatting with fans near the front of the line. A short while later we would enter the room along with Beaton and North’s agent (and the panel’s moderator), Seth Fishman — although North had not appeared. On the dais, there was a brief flurry of consternation, wondering how a 2 meter tall man could be hidden under any circumstances, and the possibility that a substitute Ryan might have to be somehow procured². Fortunately, North appeared both in the room and unconcerned as he casually glanced at his phone and noted that five minutes remained until the start of the panel and sat at the table.

The panel itself (titled Beyond The Webcomic) dealt with past, present, and future creative eandeavours, and took a focus on how webcomics have changed rapidly in the time they have existed, and so a creator that wishes to keep creating must adapt into other areas as well. Rather than try to provide a transcript or recap, I’m going to give you some choice quotes and exchanges from the hour, roughly in chronological order.

Comics is the only thing I have complete autonomy with, so it’s the first thing on the chopping block. — Beaton on the prioritizing of comics vs other projects when time is tight.

In response to a question from Fishman about projects they regret not being able to do, due to time:

I said no three times in the same day about two weeks ago and I felt like a jerk but it was also empowering? — North on not being able to do everything.

This is fun, thinking of stuff I regret. I was going to do a McNinja Choose Your Own Adventure book; Ryan was doing Hamlet at the same time³ and we were going to have a crossover in our books. But then I realized his was a million times better and I dropped it. — Hastings, followed immediately by:

Oh my god. It was my fault? — North.

I was going to so something with Time’s blog, I would have had access to all their archives and photo references, but it fell right when I was moving from New York to Toronto. I don’t regret it, but it would have been cool. When I first started getting offers I felt like I had to say yes to every offer, because what if they never offer anything again? But if the work is good, the offers will always be there. — Beaton.

What they’re working on or have coming up:

I have a book deal with Scholastic, I’ll be doing picture books for kids, and there’s a pony in it. [signs contract] — Beaton, as recounted yesterday.

Success in comics is amazing and I don’t completely trust it … so I’m very interested in exploring these other avenues. — Beaton again, following up on why she’s doing so many non-comics projects these days, most of which she can’t tell us about yet.

Coming up next is Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe, I just got in the final script and the first issue went to press this week. It releases starting in November every other week, so you get all four issues pretty quick. I’m about to announce the Kickstarter for a Dr McNinja card game. I’m also working on Galaga with Ryan … it’s a very corporate webcomic. They don’t make ANY money on it, they don’t even TRY. They just pay us. — Hastings, on what is best in life.

The new thing is Midas Flesh, which will be coming out soon. [North was interrupted and asked to recount how he came to work with BOOM]. The BOOM origin story is they emailed me asking if I wanted to write Adventure Time and I said yes.

Well, first I emailed my wife to ask if I could do it, not asking permission, but asking if I was capable of it and she said yes. The other thing is the sequel to Hamlet, which will be Romeo And/Or Juliet. — North.

On being asked about their dream project:
I’d like to write a movie. — Hastings.

I’d kind of like to write a computer game. I also have a pitch for the first half of a Back to the Future reboot but I don’t want to be the guy that people say You ruined my childhood. But you know that somebody’s going to remake it and I just don’t want it to be horrible. — North.

Is Strickland going to be in it? — Hastings.

Absolutely! It’s all about Strickland. He doesn’t age. — North.

I’ve been talking to the National Film Board of Canada about doing something with them. I don’t have time for it now, but I’m sure the opportunity will come around sometime. — Beaton, on the very real possibility of working with a beloved Canadian institution.

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¹ I must think deeply on how this incorporates into my theory that Ryan North actually died last December and has had his mighty spirit occasionally contained within an artificial shell ever since.

² As if you could find in any other person the height, playful command of language, and undying love for and from both Noam Chompsky and Joey Comeau that are the very definition of Ryan North.

³ Editor’s note: this is roughly contemporaneous with the period of time that Zach Weinersmith was working on Trial of the Clone, for the webcomics CYOA trifecta.

I’m not sure what was more unusual — that the closest thing I have to a home-town convention got covered (due to Work and Family circumstances) in about half of a Saturday, or that the Javits Center’s renovations have cleared off the main show floor to the extent that such was possible for me to do.

Having learned my lesson last year re: the impossibility of swimming against the tide to Artists Alley, I arrived good and early on Saturday morning, my press badge in hand and my Twitter account credentials resolutely un-registered. Early enough, in fact, that the possible chokepoints where you had to physically touch your badge to a reader to enter or exit the grounds weren’t very chokepointy at all, but I wasn’t entering or exiting with large swells of people.

• A few minutes after 10 they let us into Artists Alley were I immediately made my way to the table of Scott C. to purchase the second Great Showdowns collection¹, which came with an amazing sketch of Mr The Frog and an amusing story as to why Mr C. always thinks of me as Doug.
• A short while later I was making the acquaintance of Maki Naro, Strip Search veteran and PopSci cartoonist without portfolio. This was a casual visit rather than a formal interview, and so I can tell you that Naro’s got some good-looking stuff ready to drop in the near term, and I’ll be talking more about that once it does. For now, I’ll merely say that his beard was as magnificent as I suspected. Also, his Hippie Love Commune compatriot, Mackenzie Schubert, was busy with somebody every time Naro and I had a conversational lull until such time as I had to leave the AA floor, so I apologize that I didn’t get a chance to talk with him also. Next time!
• I was initially disappointed that the redoubtable Jim Zub wasn’t at his AA table, but on a hunch I dropped into the orbit of the ShiftyLook booth, waiting for an on-stage interview. I believe I mentioned previously that the forthcoming Samurai Jack comic by Zub looks great, and I shared this opinion with him; he replied with some good news: the five-issue mini has already been extended to a ten-issue run. So when Jack launches later this month, do me a personal solid and buy it, and keep buying it, because good numbers at the start of the run could be what convinces IDW to change things to “ongoing” status.

  Before leaving, I mentioned to Zub that more than anybody else I know in web-/creator owned-/freelance comics, he’s succeeded in making himself the brand, as opposed to any particular project he works on. People that have never heard of Skullkickers will read Samurai Jack, others will read his Lil’ Red Sonja oneshot, or Makeshift Miracle, of ShiftyLook projects … a lot of them will take a leap of faith and try out one of his different projects because he’s done such a good job at transferring fan interests from one to another. Hold that thought, it’ll be recurring.

• Moving a few aisles over to the BOOM! booth, I ran into Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya, waiting to start their signing for Adventure Time: Candy Capers. Speaking of creator-as-brand — they’ve moved from autobio into licensed work-for-hire, as well as original graphic novels (like Lucky Penny, serializing now at JW), along with other projects. It’s not easy to move from such close association with a project that is literally about your own life into being well-regarded in lots of different spheres, but they’re well on their way.

  They didn’t even mention at the time (because it wouldn’t be announced for a few more hours) their involvement on the NAMCO High game (previously mentioned with respect to the involvement of Andrew Hussie back in San Diego). Because that announcement? Involves a significant chunk of webcomics. Hussie is now identified as Creative Director, Panagariya as Head Writer, with a writer’s room including Magnolia Porter and Brian Clevinger, and character design/animations from Ota, R Stevens, JN Wiedle, Ashley Davis, and Geneva Hodgson, with more contributors to be revealed. Kudos to Ota and Panagariya for keeping to the terms of the NDA, and congrats to everybody else for getting to work with so many creative people at once².

• This is getting a bit long, so I’ll bring you the fun quotes from the Kate Beaton, Chris Hastings, and Ryan North panel on life Beyond the Webcomic tomorrow, but I will leave you with one choice bit now. Beaton has projects she’s working on, so many that she can’t talk about, but she announced one of them at the panel: a 32 page illustrated children’s book for Scholastic, featuring a certain pony that you may recognize; in fact, the panel was the very earliest that Beaton could announce the deal, as her agent (Seth Fishman, who moderated) handed her the contract to sign as she was sharing the news. That’s what you call immediacy in the internet age.

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¹ Bonus fun: this book contains the Showdown from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which hangs on my wall.

² I wasn’t going to get NAMCO High, but if Magnolia Porter is writing character/dialog for high school students? I’m there.

Sometimes things happen quickly. Time from noted SF author John Scalzi tweeting about being referred to as a mangina to noted fantasy author Seanan McGuire deciding that sounds more like a kaiju than an insult: 2 minutes. Time from that to noted SF author/webcomicker Howard Tayler¹ to throw a little fuel on the fire of there needing to be a mangina kaiju illustration: 8 minutes. Time from that to noted webcomicker and thriller/pulp author K Brooke “Otter” Spangler² to take up the stylus and get to artin’: 2 minutes.

And a mere 69³ minutes later (which included research), the kaiju in question was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. From offhand complaint to brain-melting horror: 81 minutes. Not to mention Tayler’s later upping of the ante (complete with robo-tighty-whities), and a short while ago the unveiling of the inevitable battle between the two by webcomicker Kasey Gibbs. We live in a weird, weird world, my friends.

• Hey, you know how Godzilla — or Gojira, if you prefer — was the first of the kaiju, and how he’s basically a great big dinosaur? Okay, radioactive and otherwise informed by movie logic but a dinosaur nonetheless. Dinosaurs have power, and dinosaurs don’t have to do what parents and teachers say, and this is a fundamental truth that every child knows.

  None moreso that Allie Brosh who has illustrated to great effect exactly what happens when you let a child become a dinosaur and it escalates to an entirely out-of-control state with awesome and fearful speed. What I love about Brosh’s (too infrequent, but I’ll gladly take what I can get) missives on childhood is how truthfully they capture the state of being a child; children can be little sociopaths (in the clinical sense of the word) and she doesn’t shy from that fact.

• Coming soon! Katie Rice announced a start date for her Strip Search-winning new webcomic, Camp Weedonwantcha, on Monday 28 October.
• Not to be outdone, fellow Strip Search finalist Abby Howard has already released the first two installments of The Last Halloween to Kickstarter backers (no, I’m not sharing my link with you, that’s what you get for not backing when you had the chance), which were described as “three weeks early”, so we should be getting the launch of TLH in a week.
• Also not to be outdone, final Strip Search finalist Maki Naro is dropping hints that his new webcomic, Sufficiently Remarkable, is gettin’ close. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that when I track Mr Naro down in the NYCC Artists Alley next weekend, we will have some SuRe to discuss (and since he’ll be sitting next to Ms Rice, I’m certain that CW will also come up). Also please note that I am not a betting man. In any event, this month will most likely go down in history as The Great Strip Search Launchening Of October Aught-Thirteen, yaaaay.

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¹ My evil twin.

² Disclaimer: a personal friend, and curiously the only one mentioned so far without at least one Hugo Award; get on that, Hugo nominating committee!

³ It’s a coincidence, grow up.