Spring when all is good and well again and we may venture outside and breathe deep of the outdoors and almost get murdered by a psycho in a van. Best wishes to John Arthur Kelly, aka the three meter tall grumpy guy from Johnny Wander¹. So maybe stay indoors where you won’t get splattered by a sociopath and if you live in New York and need some work done, you can ask the HVAC company that owned the vehicle in question if they’ve identified their employee that tried to kill John, and too bad, guess you won’t use their company after all since they’re harboring a threat and/or menace.

• Some 14 hours after closing (long enough to be confident that all last-minute adjustments were complete), the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter stands complete at US$556,596 and 10,666 backers and holy crap you guys.

  What may be most impressive to me is the number of people willing to back the project at levels that were clearly some kind of Dadaesque statement (show your copy of the game to a goat before shipping: five people paid more than a US$100 premium over a tier where they could get the same stuff without the goats) or merely to screw with creator David Malki ! (one person pledged nearly US$500 to make Malki ! hand-write all the card, which come to more than 900 separate items).

  There’s a word for actions that have little direct bearing on the mechanics of our lives but which create their own emotion (in this case: amusement and schadenfreude, respectively), and that word is Art. It maybe disguised as a card game, but Malki ! used it as a vehicle for something more, I think.².

• In a month and a half, it might be safe to go back outside again, particularly if you rush back inside and the famed Toronto Reference Library for the equally-famed TCAF, which announced some new featured guests yesterday. The one that caught my eye is French [web]comicker Boulet (en Français ici; in English here), who will apparently be making a third appearance on this side of the Atlantic, where he may still have copies of the extremely limited print version of Darkness that will be available at Stumptown³ and MoCCA in the weeks prior.
• We spoke about Howard Tayler (my evil twin), his nearly-concluded Kickstarter campaign, and the value of reining in the stretch goals a few weeks ago, and Tayler is now chiming in on the same topic in what is likely his last update prior to the close of campaign:
  

  Enough With The Stretching

  It looks like you’re going to unlock at least three if not four ship coins.

  Once that happens, I am done designing coins for this project. Why? Because the designs take about a week to hammer on and get right. Four coins right at the end is already a bit of a stretch (ahem) and I want to make sure that I actually ship all of these coins out in April, like I promised to.

  Think about that for a moment. A successful project should ship ON TIME. A wildly successful project should ALSO ship on time, right? I’m reining it in as best I can, and agonizing over every potential slip of schedule. [emphasis and large text original]

  Drop in the obligatory noting that a wise man knows his limitations and gratitude towards whoever taught the youthful Evil Version of Gary From A Parallel Reality the values of both time management and fanatical devotion to promised goals.

_______________
¹ Most of that sentence is a lie; I’ve met John and while he may look enormous next to Yuko, he’s not three meters by any stretch. He is also a delightful person and even the dreaded Punishment Shirt turned out to be not so bad as I’m told Cricket falls asleep in there now. We are very glad to hear that he wasn’t badly injured, and hope that there’s some form of justice for his destroyed bike.

² Also — look at that chart of backers and dollars by day; that’s just amazing to look at. Malki ! broke nearly every single rule on this campaign and when Kickstarter Theory is taught in the MBA programs of the future, this will be Case Study #1.

³ The annual awards of which, by the way, now include a Best Webcomic. Nominations [PDF] accepted until 30 March.

It all seems to be about the green¹ today.

• The first of the Big Four Webcomics Kickstarters of February Aught-Thirteen has wrapped, with the Cyanide & Happiness guys netting just over US$770,000 with a slight upward tick at the end there. For reference, as of this writing the other three of the Big Four are sitting at:
  • Machine of Death: US$454,000
  • Schlock Mercenary: US$115,000
  • Dresden Codak: US$362,000

  For a grand total of 1.701 million dollars American cash money. Granted, there’s Kickstarter² fees and Amazon fees and taxes and all the rest, but the compelling story remains: more money, more value for your backer contribution.

• The ur-example of more value for your backer contribution remains the Choose Your Own Hamlet by the Reconstituted Toronto Man-Mountain, who is even as we speak laying out the book, overseeing the recording of the audiobook, prototyping lil’ plush Yorick skulls, and giving us a sneak peek at one gorgeous map of the choices that can be made, which is itself made too look like Yorick’s skull. Dang, y’all.
• In fact, the only part of the increasing coolness of the Choose Your Own Hamlet that the aforementioned RTM-M³ isn’t responsible for would be the live-action version of Choose Your Own Hamlet, which will have its premiere this weekend in Busan, South Korea, thanks to local director (and webcomickin’ madman) Ryan Estrada. The presentation of To Be or Not To Be (a live, choose-your-own-adventure play) will be this Saturday at 9:00 EDT (GMT-4, or check your local time here) over the internet.

  Sure, the live audience will have the thrill of watching the actors try to manage hundreds of possible story paths, but you at home can do the same thing, and you can vote on those choices that will affect the story. Just don’t make the choices that keep Ophelia in her original, put-upon, depressive, dishrag-type personality because if you do, the text of the book (and presumably the play) will say that you aren’t allowed to be Ophelia for a while.

  The details on To Be or Not To Be (a live, choose-your-own-adventure play) are at Google+ where you can choose to watch the streaming glory and participate. It is in all likelihood the first live play designed for such social media technology and you’ll want to be able to tell your grandkids where you there at the beginning.

• As part of my theme on money, I was going to point you to a situation where a billing mishap left The Adventures of Dr McNinja facing a shutdown later this week, with the possibility of creator Chris Hastings being sent to collections⁴. Fortunately, that all got resolved before I had a chance to say anything about it, so well done McNinja fans. As always, there’s a lesson here, which in this case unfortunately is of the variety that you have to police the people that are (supposed to be) taking your money because if they don’t do so successfully they may make your life miserable.

  I once had a cable company that received the checks I sent them and credited my bill as paid, but never actually cashed them. This went on for six months and only came to a head when I moved house and tried to get my cable disconnected. Then they tried to hit me with hundreds of dollars of “late fees” because I dunno, they lost my checks or something? The fact that I had statements showing that my bills were paid each month didn’t seem to matter until I mentioned involving utility regulators with the state of New Jersey, then they decided to write it off in the interests of keeping a satisfied customer. Then I moved and never used them again THE END.

  Where was I? Oh, yes — it seems stupid to have to follow up with people to make sure they’re actually taking your money (you’d think they were really interested in doing so on their own), but sadly it’s true. You have to be more business type than artist to make it as an independent artist, so take those steps towards due diligence and it will make your life easier in the long run.

_______________
¹ Note for people not in the US: our paper currency is boring, kinda greenish on one side and mostly black on the other. We desperately need somebody from a country that knows how to make pretty cash convince the stick-up-their-asses types in Washington that bills don’t need to be drab.

² How ubiquitous is Kickstarter these days? My sister brought it up the other day, asking me to explain how her friend, a musician, managed to raise US$49,000 to master & press an album and what the crap-hell?

³ Known around the house as Ryan North

⁴ If you don’t happen to know Chris Hastings, you should be aware of two things:

• He is just the nicest guy, even nicer than he appears to be via the internet if you can imagine such a thing
• He is too pretty to be sent to collections, you guys

We’ll be starting out with the happy items before we get to the infuriating stuff at the end. You’ve been warned.

• We’re still most of a month away from the release of Lucy Knisley’s Relish¹, but that’s not to early to make plans to celebrate it when it hits the market. The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is doing exactly that, having announced an author’s appearance:
  

  The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes cartoonist Lucy Knisley on Sunday, April 14, 2013 from 1:00-3:00pm for a discussion and booksigning of her latest release, Relish, published by First Second Books. This event is free and open to the public.

  And heck, let’s mention another upcoming event, featuring a man that probably every comicker born after about 1960 considers a major influence:

  The Cartoon Art Museum and Chuck Jones Center for Creativity will host a special reception for the exhibition, Chuck Jones: Drawing on Imagination on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Special guests include Chuck Jones’ widow, Marian Jones, his daughter, Linda Jones Clough and grandson, Craig Kausen, who is the Chairman of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, as well as other guests from the family and the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Cartoon Art Museum and Chuck Jones Center for Creativity.

  Since that event is a benefit, tickets will cost you US$10 (with an additional US$50 for VIP access). Having spent many, many hours in study of Chuck’s various works, I can tell you without reservation that if I were on the Left Coast I would absolutely be there.

• I’m pretty sure I met the guys behind First Law of Mad Science last October at the 2012 NYCC IDLH experiment; I spent some time on Saturday bringing pizza to hungry webcomickers and although I missed Meredith Gran (who was boothing with FLOMS), I did leave some pizza for creators Mike Isenberg and Oliver Mertz. Nice fellows.

  So nice, in fact, that in order to get the word out regarding the second & third issues of FLOM launching on Comixology, they’re giving away free download codes for the first issue. Just be one of the first 50 people to tweet to them at @FirstLawComic² and you’ll get a redemption code that you can plug in via your Comixology account. That’s it! Free comics!

• Not webcomics, but holy geeze go read it: The irreplaceable John Scalzi has spent the last couple of days eviscerating a contract being offered up by new e-publishing imprints at Random House that is so amazingly bad I can only hope that Random House will release a statement in a week that says, Yeah, sorry, we were totally blitzed on cough syrup when we wrote that. Our bad.

  Hey, TopatoCo? After Make That Thing finds its feet and you’re looking for your next realm to conquer, it seems that e-books needs a publisher that isn’t criminally stupid about how nakedly it’s seeking to exploit authors.

________________
¹ Which you may recall that we at Fleen found to be a terrific book, and you should definitely go buy it when it releases on 2 April 2013.

² I always thought that the First Law was Ape shall never kill ape, but whatevs.

Everybody’s on a plane right about now, heading to Emerald City Comic Con; I suppose it’ll be just as bad when TCAF or SDCC come around, but man I’ll breathe easier when this flight lands in Seattle:

.@aidosaur @yaytime @goraina @dresdencodak @caitefa @MagnoliaPearl @hanoodlez @jnwiedle @johngreenart @jonrosenberg on same flight! Wowwww

Go safely, my friends. Oh, and when Aaron Diaz lands, somebody tell him that his Kickstarter cleared US$200,000.

Speaking of Kickstarts, Ben Costa’s Shi Long Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk has built up enough pages for Volume 2 to hit, to the production of which you may now contribute. Pàng, The Wandering Shàolín Monk, volume 2 is, in the few hours it’s been up, about 10% of the way towards its relatively modest US$6000 goal. Sure, there are Kickstarts asking for less, but consider that PTWSMv2 will match the form factor of volume 1 (full disclosure: Costa was kind enough to give me a copy at SDCC 2010, namely a full-color, heavy-stock, hardcover volume which is as well-designed an upmarket as anything put out by :01 Books.

For a self-published collection, it’s about as high-quality as you can get, and it’s offered right at the base reward tier, US$25 bucks to get a copy sent to you in August. Bargain of the year, easily, and that’s before you factor in the pitch video, which features 1970s-style Hong Kong cinematography and cheapo, out-of-sync dubbing. For anybody that grew up watching Black Belt Theater on channel 11 out of New York (or your local equivalent), the video is a trip down nostalgia lane, and no less than one would expect from the Dean of Iron Crotch Studies at Iron Crotch University¹, and founding publisher, Iron Crotch University Press.

______________
¹ Home of the Fightin’ Rusties.

The annual scramble for San Diego Comic Con hotel rooms started at 12:00 noon EST and by 12:02 I was done with a promise of an email with my assignment. Here’s hoping.

Oh, and since this is going to be a Kickstarter-heavy post,let’s get something non-Kickstarter out of the way up front — I have of late been enjoying the crap out of Help Us! Greatest Warrior, which appears at a Tumblr near you The title character is bean-like, more than a little dude-crazy and will utterly kick your ass if she can be bothered. Creator Madéleine Flores has been killing it, and you should hit the (very brief) archives right now.

• Is this new? I think this is new. David Malki ! posted in an update for the Machine of Death card game Kickstarter that he will use the powers of technology to add a special reward for backers that also back a different, unrelated game. This is, I believe, the first Kickstarter crossover:
  

  Story War is a little bit similar to Machine of Death in its broad strokes (“combine random elements to accomplish a wacky objective”), but varies in the particulars.

  If you pledge to both games (physical versions), we’re gonna compare our backer lists and each send you an exclusive bonus card: a Machine of Death card that references Story War, and a Story War card that references Machine of Death! We’ll also send you a PDF with a set of suggested CROSSOVER RULES for combining both cards in HIGH STAKES INTERLEAGUE PLAY. [emphasis and SHOUTING original]

  I can’t wait to see what other cross-pollinations this might lead to. In this case, it’s a match of equals (both Story War and Machine of Death are well over their goals, so neither is trying to gain success by drafting off the other), but I could see especially successful projects being approached by struggling projects, trying to succeed via cross promotion that mostly goes one way. Secondary market, anyone?

• Speaking of secondary markets, about ten days back we mentioned a new service from TopatoCo called Make That Thing with some speculation about how MTT might be structured and a promise of more details soon. That was supposed to have been last weekend via an interview with TopatoCo VP Holly Rowland, but weather systems (and now EmCity) got in the way, so we’ll be talking with Holly next week.

  In the meantime, Make That Thing had a public unveiling last night, and we’re able to see some of how MTT is going to operate. In addition to shipping and fulfillment services, MTT will be offering promotional services, and will also be able to offer certain kinds of production:

  Because each campaign involves a high amount of personal attention and attention to detail, we only take on a handful of projects at a time, and only those that we think match up well with the kinds of things we know how to make – primarily comics, books, and games.

  We don’t know how to make USB toasters or solar-powered flashlights, so we simply won’t take on Hardware, Design, Video Game, or Fashion projects. Other people are better at that than we are. However, the rewards for your project are heavily weighed toward the following:

  • Printed materials (books, comics, posters)
  • Printed or embroidered apparel items (T-shirts, polos, neckties, aprons)
  • Novelties and baubles (stickers, patches, bookmarks, foam swords)
  • Other things that don’t involve inventing a new type of manufacturing apparatus

  Then we might be a good fit.

  They’re in closed beta right now, and as MTT finds its feet, I suspect they’ll be taking on projects primarily from the existing roster of TopatoCo clients. However, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if future clients found an MTT campaign as being similar to an audition for joining up with TopatoCo as an ongoing client. More when I get to chance to talk to Rowland, where I’ll be sure to ask who thought it was a good idea to leave a forklift with the TopatoCo Funployees.

• Speaking of Make That Thing, we knew that the Machine of Death card game was going to use MTT on account of that was sort of their soft launch. Now we know that their second client will be the Dresden Codak book which is well into holy shit territory with nearly US$120,000 raised in the first 15 hours. Aaron Diaz¹ has been hard at work since launch trying to come up with stretch goals that he hadn’t anticipated needing for a week or more. Even if you don’t read Dresden Codak, go check out the campaign just for video, then ask yourself honestly how fancy your pants are.

______________
¹ The Tolkien and Dinosaur Scholar Par Excellence. Oh my glob, Aaron, you need to draw the main players of The Silmarillion as maniraptors.

I ain’t Elisabeth Kübler-Ross but I do know something about the stages of grief, such as when Achewood (the once-unstoppable behemoth of absurdist-realist philosophizing) sputters to a near-halt¹. As noted previously, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and however he may find joy in producing aspects of Achewood that I may then consume, it’s all good. I get to share that particular creation that he lets loose on the world whether it’s once a day or twice a year, and however much I may miss it, I cannot complain too much about not getting free entertainment on a my desired schedule rather than that which Onstad can accommodate given the shape of his life.

So it is with a mixture of excitement and don’t-get-too-excited-yet that I noted his first Achewood-related bloggance in more than a year:

Hi. I’m back. I have some good news for you. It’s been a long time coming. A lot has changed since I fell off the face of the earth.

First and foremost: I’ve been working with a team of artists, engineers, and producers to bring Achewood to life. To give it the voices, richness, and opportunities it never had as a comic strip.

I’m flying to Los Angeles today to begin a week of network pitch meetings. If things go well, we’ll find a home for our show. Please cross your fingers for us, send us your good energy. And please, share this clip with your world. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.

There are many other things I want to share with you. About Achewood, about this, about all the loose ends, and about my plans for it going forward. This is the tip and the bulk of the iceberg, but there is much more. It’s been a very busy couple years, full of life-size tragedies, manifold germinations of happiness, and surprising rebirths—just like Achewood.

The pitch meetings mentioned are to explore the possibility of an Achewood-related animated series? special? film? project of some sort, the teaser of which makes me smile. Because I’m totally in the tank for Achewood, I’ve been parsing through those 19 seconds of sound and motion² for any clues they might offer³. Because I’m a realist, I know that even properties with a constituency within an entertainment company can be optioned, paid for, and spend years or decades in development without ever coming to fruition. At this time, possibilities exist — which is more than was true last week.

• Poorcraft 2, on the topic of traveling on the cheap, is well in production and on Saturday Poorcraft bookrunner Spike dropped some news on it. While P2 will see Diana Nock returning for art duties, Spike herself will be stepping back from writing duties as Ryan Estrada — webcomics own Marco Polo — handles the script. Or handled, as the book is well into the gettin’ drawed stage, meaning that Estrada’s work is largely done. Can’t wait to see how Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here turns out.
• Updating our EmCity seating information, news comes this morning that a fairly substantial chunk of Artists Alley island F will be given over to Benign Kingdom. The official exhibitor’s list mentions B9 occupying seat F-16, which is also listed as the home of Johnny Wander. However, word is that B9 will actually occupy seats F12-F16, of which three seats are listed as occupied, and two not listed, which tells me that Grand Vizier George is probably planning to have people rotate into the space seats throughout the show, as well as giving the usual occupants a little more breathing room than is normally found in Artists Alley.
• Given that various Strip Search parties have said that the show will be launching this month, and that the Strip Search site lists the show as running Tuesdays and Fridays, and there’s only one of those weekdays left in the month, Im’a keep a browser window refreshing tomorrow. If nothing else, I’ve been very impressed with the Artist interviews that have run, and how well the Strip Search producers (possibly Khoo) are at stirring up shit in such a blatant fashion. If there’s a reunion show, we may see murder yet.

_______________
¹ To wit: five strips in all of 2011, twelve in the first six months of 2012, and zero since.

² As opposed to Sound and Motion.

³ Such as the 0:11 mark, where it appears that Teodor has been retired in favor of Roast Beef as Ray tests his Whiskey á la Mood sampler. It also appears that Ray is the centerpiece of this teaser, which makes me wonder if he still sounds the same as when Onstad voiced him.

So Howard Tayler’s Kickstarter is running at some 3000% of goal and counting, and he’s got a really important update that you should read. Certainly, read it if you’re a backer, but also read it if you’ve ever considered running a Kickstarter yourself because he talks about how your plans can get completely pooched not just from failing at a Kickstarter, but from succeeding too well¹.

The original scope for this project was as follows:

• Fund the creation of up to five different coins, at volumes which allow me to sell them at conventions, and keep stock on hand.
• Fund at somewhere between $10k and $20k after thirty days.
• Ship all the coins in mid-April

For reference, Tayler is just shy of US$55,000 as of this writing. Between Tayler’s experience and other runaway successes we’ve seen where the delivery of rewards becomes a serious burden², I’m starting to wonder if creators should make much more liberal use of limited rewards. Expecting to see no more than X to Y and a proportional number of backers, and you’ve arranged your schedule for the next few months around those assumptions? Limit the rewards so if you get a blowout success in the opening hours, you aren’t obligated to do more than you’re capable of.

If there’s pent-up demand, you can always say, I’m gratified so many of you want in on this, I’ll whip up some new rewards tiers and let the rest of you give me money while making the appropriate shifts to your schedule. And hey, nothing drives up interest like initial scarcity. If you’ve got a relatively straightforward set of rewards with a predictable production schedule, reliable supply chain, and scalable delivery operations, feel free to leave everything unlimited. In all other cases, some hard-nosed realistic self-assessment will probably be what stands between you and madness.

• Speaking of Kickstarters, Zach Weinersmith wrapped up his this morning, raising US$341,667 towards his newest book. If my math is correct, the number of backers he’s gotten at the various tiers means he’ll be signing his name approximately 4194 times in the various books that get signatures. Although many of those signatures will come from earlier books, which means Weinersmith may already have them signed and his hand won’t fall off the week after the big pallets arrive at his house.
• Nobody does data–sharing like Dorothy Gambrell³, and it was gratifying to see that her latest way to envision information is blowing up all over the damn place in the last couple of days. You won’t find it on her website, though, as it was made for Psychology Today’ February 2013 issue. In case you don’t subscribe, the editors have made her infographic of where missed connections occur by state available. If you’re a Scientologist, it’s all over Tumblr without attribution, which totally sucks.
• More EmCity participant notifications have come in, meaning I’ll have to go back to my earlier post and update the lists and maps. In the meantime, please consider yourselves notified that John Troutman and Ryan Smith will be at table Q-19 in Artists Alley.

_______________
¹ Paging Rich Burlew, who gets all the slack in the world for an unpredictable injury that forced him to stop work for months, but who also wound up in the situation of having to create 25 separate product categories and try to keep nearly 15,000 backers happy while being just one person. That’s the sort of situation that sends sensible, grounded people on benders that take Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas as a to-do list.

² Above and beyond the simple shipping aspect, regarding which I will have more to say next week; the real work is in the design and production of everything you promise.

³ Except maybe Randall Munroe. If Gambrell and Munroe ever collaborated, my brain would explode from sheer enjoyment.

First, a quick update on yesterday’s Webcomics Folks and Where to Find Them at EmCity posting: Kel McDonald was kind enough to let us know that her booth (number 1008, for those playing at home) will, in addition to herself, Kory Bing, and Magnolia Porter, also be hosting Meredith McClaren, David Willis, and Tyler Crook. Keep the updates coming, people.

Okay. To my knowledge, the greatest overfunding of a webcomic-related Kickstarter on a percentage basis is not Homestuck (which achieved a relatively modest 355% of goal), Smut Peddler (415%), Diesel Sweeties (2006%, now we’re talking), or even the vaunted Order of the Stick (2171%), but Darren Gendron’s Monster Alphabet board book, which scored a funding rate of 5015%. Granted, the goal was only US$500, but a fifty times overfunding is pretty damn impressive.

I mention all this because Howard Tayler¹ launched a Kickstarter for a collectible last night at 10:00pm EST and had funded less than four minutes later. As of this writing (just over 13 hours into a 30 day campaign), Tayler sits at just under US$40,000 on a US$1800 goal, putting him at 2214% of goal, putting him past Order of the Stick and coming up on halfway to Gendron’s achievement.

Again, low funding goals make overfunding percentages easy to hit², but take a look at the projection on Tayler’s project, which is on track for an unreal 34,286%. Yes, yes, I know — Kicktraq projections never come true, or Ryan North would have cleared US$1.7 million and Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck more ten times that. But! Look at the initial Kicktraq projected values vs actual funding and take them as a ratio and you’ll get a fairly narrow range³:

• Homestuck: 5.75
• Smut Peddler: 5.17
• Diesel Sweeties: insufficient data (only last four days shown)
• Monster Alphabet: insufficient data (dates don’t correlate with campaign)
• Hamlet: 2.92

Across a wide range of initial goals (US$500 to US$700,000) and a wide range of overfundings (355% to 5015%), the ratio of initial projection to final funding runs between about 3:1 to 6:1. If these are representative, Tayler can expect to take in somewhere in the range of US$100,000 to US$200,000 (as of today, since the projection has gone up since yesterday, probably because it launched so late in the day), with a percentage funding of somewhere between 5500% and 11,100%. Of course, my sample size is so small as to make predictions laughably inaccurate, thus the very wide ranges given.

And you know what’s weird? That’s not even the oddest thing about this campaign. The oddest thing (apart from the fact that Tayler, who’s self-funded all his rather pricey books, is Kickstarting at all, especially for such a low-total item) is that Tayler opted to make something that has such a tenuous connection to his core IP.

The challenge coin (or “coins”, thanks to stretch goals being obliterated almost immediately) has never appeared in Schlock Mercenary. He had to explain what challenge coins are in the opening paragraphs of his Kickstarter description, and yet he’s hit upon something that his readership simply cannot live without.

Furthermore, this I didn’t know about these things existed but it must be mine is priced above the usual impulse buy for an unknown quantity⁴. The challenge coins are related to Schlock Mercenary (two of them, at least; the stretch goal “Not my circus, not my monkey” coin is Howard trying to import a Polish aphorism) but not as directly as a book, and they’re an unfamiliar type of item.

That’s the key takeaway today — your fans may not know what they want and a sufficiently unique item (don’t bother with challenge coins, that’s been done now) may just take off into the stratosphere. If you’ve got an item that can be produced in a wide range of quantities at decent margins to yourself, Kickstarter means there’s no reason not to try.

________________
¹ My evil twin. Happy eleven-and-a-quarterth Birthday next week, Howard.

² As in so many things, Rich Burlew’s Kickstarter was an anomaly, being both massively overfunded on a percentage basis and having a very high initial goal of nearly US$58,000. To a lesser degree, Ryan North’s Choose Your Own Hamlet is also a trendbreaker, with a higher-than-normal goal of US$20,000 and an achievement of more than 2900%.

³ Again, Order of the Stick is an anomaly, as the initial projected total wound up less than the actual total, giving a ratio of 0.718 which just doesn’t ever happen in nature.

⁴ I’m basing that statement on Jon Rosenberg’ Quantum Theory of Money which states that fans at a show are willing to part with up to twenty bucks without too much hestiation.

However! From my many hours assisting at booths at various conventions, I can tell you that quantum unit holds for something that fans recognize, like a t-shirt. I know what a t-shirt is, and it features a design related to something I like is the situation that leads to that twenty changing hands.

Odder items are more likely to follow the rules for impulse purchases, whereby somebody that isn’t a fan is willing to drop money on something they don’t know, or actual fans are willing to drop on something that isn’t represented in whatever they’re a fan of.

Impulse buys max out at five bucks. Anything more and you can see the gears turning in their heads — I don’t know this thing, so I’m not willing to risk a great deal of money against the possibility that I may not derive as much utility or enjoyment from it in the future as I suspect I might at this very moment. I really have to stop listening to the Freakonomics podcast, it’s rubbing off on me.

If anybody was going to do an extra-special comic for update number Six! Six! Six!, you knew it would be KC Green.

Ah, late February, when the comic-reading public’s fancy turns towards the far northwestern reaches and the first major show of the year: Emerald City Comic Con. As in past years, the webcomics contingent and their allies are well represented but the show floor is a bit compex, recalling the bifurcated layout of MoCCA Fest back when it was still in the Puck Building¹. The main floor of EmCity is broken into North and South areas, with a section of Artists Alley in each area. Let’s break ’em down so you can find people.

The bulk of the webby-ish creators are going to be in the South area, shown here:

And the showrunners have helpfully clustered webcomics types within about a two-aisle radius of the easily-located Dark Horse booth (1102), immediately in front of the main hall entrance. Start from there and follow the arrows:

and you’ll end up in the booths of Weregeek/Lunasea (705), Wasted Talent (806), the Great and Bountiful TopatoCoan Empire (with a dozen or more creators at 905 and 1002), Kel McDonald, Kory Bing, Magnolia Porter, Meredith McClaren, David Willis, and Tyler Crook (1008), Dave Kellett & Kris Straub (1107)², Something*Positive and Girls With Slingshots (1108), Scott Kurtz (1105)², Blind Ferret (1106), The Oatmeal (1202), Girl Genius (1204), The Devil’s Panties (1205), Brad Guigar (1206)², and Unshelved.

Staying in the South area, the bulk of the Artists Alley denizens may be found in the B, D, and F islands:

That would be Katie Cook (B-08), Raina Telgemeier (B-10), Dean Trippe (D-01), KrazyKow (D-03), Dave Roman and John Green (D-11), Mary Cagle (F-10), Evan Dahm (F-12), Phil McAndrew (F-13), and Yuko & Ananth (F-16).

Casting your eyes to the North area, you’re going to want to head left coming off the Sky Bridge:

Over on the west side of the hall you’ll find Alaska Robotics (2606), Erika Moen and Dylan Meconis³ (2615), John Troutman and Ryan Smith (Q-19), and the Cloudscape Comics collective (R-03). It’s a little bit of a hike from the South area, but worth the few minutes it’ll take you to traverse the distance.

Naturally, I’ve probably missed people in my survey that I should have included, so if you want to correct any oversights, the comments are open and awaiting your feedback.

Edit to add: exhibitors to list, updated map of the North area.
_______________
¹ Back before the Great Comics Conflagration of Aught-Eight. Such a tragic day.

² The members of Halfpixel appear to have split themselves across three booths; unconfirmed reports indicate that they may be arriving at the show in separate limousines, and that Yoko Ono has been seen canoodling with an unnamed member of the collective. More on this as it warrants.

³ If you see Snowicane Erika, ask her if this time she’s come to Seattle to make friends. #teamerika

I don’t mean to be flip, and we will talk comics in a minute, but today almost all my mental bandwidth is being taken up by a music video featuring a youth choir, the Barenaked Ladies, and Commander Frickin’ Hadfield¹. I am not immune to earnest hopefulness, especially when it’s got a catchy tune.

So, comics.

• I first noticed French webcomicker Boulet about this time last year when he posted an absolutely astonishing 24 hour comic called Darkness. Today I noticed an announcement from AdHouse Books that Darkness will see print in April which makes me very, very happy. Sadly, it’s being produced in limited numbers, and will primarily be available — as near as I can tell — at Boulet’s appearances at Stumptown and MoCCA. If you get a chance to grab a copy of Darkness, absolutely do so.
• KaBOOM! continues mining the talent of webomickry and indy arts for covers of its Cartoon Network-spinoff comics, with Brian Butler, Mary Cagle, David McGuire, and Mad Rupert getting the nod for the covers of Regular Show #2. Gotta say, Rupert’s realist take on the main cast is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
• Finally, congrats to Brad Guigar, for today marks the day that his internet comicking efforts become a teenager, and we all know how difficult teens can be. In three years when his webcomics are screaming that they hate Brad and why can’t they borrow the car, be sure to give the guy some love.

_______________
¹ He is seriously the most inspiring, fire-up-everybody-on-the-potential-of-space astronaut we’ve had since forever.