Yeah, yeah, I know — sounds like an episode title from an especially enthusiastic anime series. It also describes what’s going on outside the window, so there you are.

• There’s still (as of this writing) approximately nine hours to get in on the Johnny Wander volume 3 giveaway. I want to have this thing in the mail before the JWv3 book launch party next weekend at Bergen Street Comics. Be there and, uh, I guess that means you don’t need a free copy.
• Speaking of Kickstarted books, Benign Kingdom Spring 2013 finished up last night a bit over US$45,000 (or three times goal) and Zach Weinersmith’s SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 ticked over US$200K (with two weeks still to go) at about the same time and is closing on a stretch goal of hardcover books.
• Still speaking of books, you may recall last October that Stephan Pastis completely missed the point on webcomics which prompted me to offer a deal:
  

  Tomorrow, or this weekend, or sometime during the run of NYCC, I’m going to seek out Matthew Inman (whom I’ve met briefly, and liked quite a lot), who has a new book out, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be willing to release an approximate copies-sold total for that book for, say, the three months of quarter 4, 2012. Then come January we’ll run that number here, and Pastis can compare it to the first three months of whichever Pearls collection he likes.

  I didn’t have the chance to have that talk with Inman at New York Comic Con on account of the extremely long lines and crowding, but he’s gone and shared the to-date sales numbers with the world anyway¹ in a State of the Strip presentation:

  As of today, How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You has been on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 17 consecutive weeks, and it held the #1 spot on that list for 7 of those weeks. We’re into our 11th printing, which puts us at over 450,000 copies in print. This has been drastically different from my first book, which saw strong sales at the beginning but then dropped off after all my readers bought copies. Instead, sales have been continually flourishing ever since the book came out in October. It’s mind-boggling for me to imagine nearly half a million cat books out there.

  For reference, Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out released at almost the same time as HTTIYCIPTKY; both books have appeared in the NY Times Best Seller List (Pastis under Paperback Graphic Books as seen here; Inman under Paperback Advice & Misc. as seen here), and I haven’t done any searching through the lists to find out how many times each has been there.

  But I did notice for the first time that PFT#O and HTTIYCIPTKY are both published by Andrews McMeel, so Pastis can probably work out if 450,000 copies is a typical run for a comics collection there, and probably figure that he and Inman are making a similar amount per book sold. That’s how you make a living at it.²

• Not that popular consciousness equals great wealth. Ethan Nicolle points out that a success on the scale of Axe Cop will get you the freedom to make comics and also a cup of coffee:
  

  I have made one giant step in comics and that is that I have managed to live off of creating my own material (for the most part) for the last few years. I have made an income that most people who went to college would frown on. That is to say I could probably make a similar income as a shift manager at Starbucks (in fact I could, I checked).

  Not that Nicolle is crying poverty to play for sympathy; his real goal is to spread an understanding of what the business is like:

  I think it’s good for aspiring creators to know that even with a lot of critical acclaim, you still have to do a lot of climbing and the battle is never really over. That is why it is good to know why you are doing it in the first place. Don’t blame those with success for your failure. Don’t do it for the success, do it in spite of the success. Do it because you love it and don’t know what else to do with yourself, and success or not, do it happily and gratefully because making art is a blessing.

  Well said, and the whole thing is well worth reading.

• More than once this page has discussed the proposition that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that art is more about the execution than the lightning-striking inspiration. On an occasion or two, we’ve even thrown out ideas for anybody to use that might want to. Got another one of those for you (I had some odd dreams t’other night), which you’ll find below the cut. If you want to use it, I waive any and all rights or interests in perpetuity, in all forms of storage and transmission current or future, and likewise release any claims by my heirs and assignees. Go nuts.

________________
¹ Not that I had anything to do with it.

² Also, Inman managed to wang his girlfriend’s website, but it’s back now if you like reading about coffee.

(more…)

Oh my goodness, so many things today.

• The final word on the place of webcomics in the larger comics world was offered by TopatoCo VP of Asskicking Holly Rowland:
  

  TopatoCo is between Oni and Dark Horse at ECCC. If there’s anyone still talking about the legitimacy of webcomics, I will pants them.

  Please, somebody, call her bluff. I’m begging you. Everybody else, have video cameras ready.

• Today marks ten years of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau making A Softer World; ten years and 931 instances of breathtakingly beautiful photos and profoundly arresting captions. In all of webcomickry, I can’t think of another example that simultaneously pulls in two so very different directions and expresses two so very different voices so very, very well.
• Once upon a time there was a simple acknowledgment of fact: any collection of webcomickers, impromptu or organized, was incomplete without at least one Ryan in the immediate vicinity. While Ryans Estrada and North have been publicly very busy of late¹, Ryan Sias of Silent Kimbly fame pulled back a bit, did some children’s books and storyboarding, and wasn’t so much with the webcomicking.

  Until today, that is, when Sias announced the return of the no longer silent Kimbly with new weekly adventures. One quick note: you get to The Kimbly Chronicles by using the address http://www.kimblychronicales.com/, with an extra “a” in the middle there. Just bookmark it and you’ll be fine.

• The countdown to Strip Search kicked into a quicker tempo yesterday with the launch of StripSearch.tv. Obviously no episodes yet, but you can meet the Artists, learn about the show, and puzzle your way through some rather odd numbers associated with the production. I don’t know what the whole pineapples thing is about², but I’m intensely curious. Hit the RSS feed and you won’t miss any Tuesday/Friday episodes when they start later this month.

________________
¹ Respectively involved in global trekking, single-person animation, and Korean comic translating (Estrada), and totally math comic book writing, Kickstarter record breaking choose your own Shakespeare adventure creating, and beloved movie novelization close reading (North).

² My own fault, I suppose. When Robert Khoo asked if I had any more questions, I specifically did not ask if any edible bromeliads featured prominently in the show. Mea culpa.

Feeling somewhat less insane today. Dunno what was up with that. Hey, is that a copy of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff? I gotta get on reading that!

• Speaking of books, I received this week my Kickstarter-backed copy of Johnny Wander volume 3, which is an awesome read. I actually was given a copy by creators Yuko Ota and Ananth Panagariya a bit more than a month ago (thanks), so I’ve decided to give away the copy that came in the mail. You (yes, you) know somebody that doesn’t read Johnny Wander and should; tell me about who that person is and why they need to read JW, and you’ll win the book. Best comment contribution by, let’s say end-of-day next Friday, 8 February, wins for their friend/relative/whoever.
• Speaking even more about books, the Young Adult Library Services Association has released their annual list of best graphic novels for teens, and there’s some familiar names on the list. In addition to the almost obligatory Raina Telgemeier’s Drama and Hope Larson’s adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time, you’ve got Chris Eilopoulos & Nate Cosby’s Cow Boy, and a whopping six entries from :01 Books: Hades: Lord of the Dead by George O’Connor, Broxo by Zack Giallongo, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke, Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks, The Silence of Our Friends by Jim Demonakos, Mark Long and Nate Powell, and Sumo by Thien Pham. That’s like one book out of three of their output in 2012. I’ll also note that Drama, Friends (boys) and Friends (silent) were also listed as among the top ten for 2013.
• Happy ten yeariversary to Dinosaur Comics and the nearly-resurrected Ryan North; highlights of the past ten years (from North’s perspective beyond the grave) are here¹, and you can see how far he’s come as an artist by comparing the first strip to today’s. Congratulations for being so awesome at comics Ryan and also for getting better at parties. In your hono[u]r, please enjoy once more this review I wrote of your first Dinosaur Comics book, composed entirely of quotes by T-Rex.
• East Coast (of the United States, that is) denizens! Make your way to New Haven, Connecticut and the Ivy League university contained therein by next Friday, as “Hurricane” Erika Moen will be speaking at the IvyQ conference. According to the conference schedule, that’ll be at 2:45pm in WLH 208; I’m told that “WLH” stands for “Harkness Hall” at 100 Wall Street on the campus of Yale, which is apparently the home of Yale’s LGBT Studies program. Tell Erika I said “hi” and “Hope you won Strip Search although I won’t know for months yet”.

_______________
¹ Warning: features photos illustrating North’s fetish for oddly spherical dinosaurs crushing Admiral Ackbars. It’s kinda out there?

Yeah, no way I’m giving you a photo of that. You’re welcome.

• From the long-awaited good news desk, Lore Sjöberg has a reliable web presence again. It’s coming up on two years since some [suitably angry adjective] spammers decided to jack Sjöberg’s main domain (the sadly still-offline lungfish.com), taking down much of his related sites. And then his hosting company offered him a new site that came pre-compromised by spammers.

  Yep, in between the time they said, Okay, here’s the server credentials, go crazy and Sjöberg logging in for the first time, hackers had already made their presence known. And, if I recall correctly, the hosting company decided the proper remedy for this was not to give back his money because it’s clear that their product can never be trusted, but to rather extend a billing credit and insist he use their clearly-untrustworthy hardware. Man, screw those guys.

  About ten months ago, Lore managed to resurrect his previous awesome site of awesome things, The Brunching Shuttlecocks, so at least we again had access to his creations of the pre-Lungfish era. A week later, he managed a partial reconstruction of his most recent site, Bad Gods, and earlier today he announced that’s it’s back in a form that merits his satisfaction and available for your perusal, so peruse. Peruse, damn you!

  Really, all of this is just an excuse for me to point you towards some fairly neat content-bending that Sjöberg’s done, where if you search for something that was original presented in many parts, it gets knit together as a single page:

  First off, I realized that whenever possible a continuous narrative should be displayed in a single page. The impetus for this was realizing that Wikipedia has some truly massive articles, but they’re presented in a single page, and nobody complains about that. So my expectation is that putting a major Sean and Wormwood arc all on one page probably won’t bother people. Certainly it will bother fewer people than having to click “next” over and over would.

  The key words being continuous narrative; search for “Sean” at the new Bad Gods and you’ll get the option to scroll between the multipart Sean and Wormwood, The Friendly Satanists stories. But if you wanted to search for the Monster Manual Comix or Lore Brand Comics, they’ll be one to a page, since they’re all oneshots. Tragically, the Bandwidth Theatre shorts appear to be searchable only by individual name, so it’s a good thing there’s a list of them over at the Brunching site¹.

  But! The new Bad Gods is nothing if not an experiment in user interaction, and I have little to no doubt that Sjöberg will be continuing to tweak and refine and make it easier for people to find things. It’s sorta what he does.

• Also worth noting today: our friends at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco have announced a new gallery show that is sure to merit the attention of anybody that’s ever found the combination of pictures and humor to be worth their time and attention. Chuck Jones: Drawing on Imagination (100 Years of an Animated Artist) runs 9 February to 5 May, with a reception to be held end-of-March-ish (details to be announced).

  Anybody creating comics or animation, or perhaps enjoying them, or maybe just sitting around and breathing at any point in the last half-century or so knows that Chuck Jones was a giant in the field, and likely a cherished memory at the very least. He was one of our great humorists, one of our great storytellers, and so very, very important in our culture. If you can possibly make it out to the city by the bay and see this exhibition, do so.

_______________
¹ And holy cow, the never-to-be-surpassed brilliance that is the depleted uranium beholder statue is twelve years old? Dang.

Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

It may help to have some gin on hand.

• If you’re gonna have capital-A Art, then tanjdammit, you ought to have Art that provokes the occasional Art Riot, by which I do not mean some bluenose tut-tutting on TV about how something is insufficiently in line with existing religious or moral beliefs; I’m talking angry Parisians or perhaps Viennese in the streets, offended to their very core that something so wrong could be perpetrated on an unsuspecting world. And if this were 1913 instead of 2013, I do believe that we would have righteous cause for such an action:
  

  “I’m really not sure what you call this,” says TopatoCo founder and CEO Jeffrey Rowland. “There’s probably a German word for it, but I’m afraid to look it up.”

  If the entire internet, in all of its random, rambling, poor-spelled, nonsensical non-glory could be distilled down to its very essence, it would be the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff hardcover collection from TopatoCo. It is the sort of revolutionary, transgressive, frankly frightening creation that makes me want to tear the seats out of an opera house and give future radio¹ documentarians cause to talk about the unrest in hushed, sincere tones². This is Le Scare du Printemps for a later, more addled age:

  The book Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff lavishly presents the comic’s entire run in a treatment worthy of the highest masters of the form. It contains a completely gratuitous 4-page centerfold reading simply “centaurfold” in bright pink type.

  “The printing company we used was utterly convinced that we, as designers, didn’t know what in the world we were doing,” says [book co-designer David] Malki [!]. “The proof sheet listing supposed ‘errors’ in the book’s layout ran five pages long. I had to initial each one saying, ‘Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK. Yes, that’s OK, trust us.’”

  Scattered throughout the book are perforated business-reply cards taking the form of irredeemable Subway coupons (a first for comic strip collections). Each copy of the book also comes with a “travel version” (a removable poster of all the book’s pages in grid format); a custom commemorative coin (randomly chosen from 4 designs struck); an oversized plastic paperclip imprinted with the word “paperclop”; and an animated lenticular bookmark. Bound into the spine is a red ribbon approximately three feet long, and if you scratch the nacho chip sticker on the back cover, it smells faintly of pizza. (The hologram sticker of Tony Hawk smells only of chemicals.) [emphasis original]

  The Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff Limited Hardcover is available for US$44, in one print run, while supplies last. I’ll put this link up just in case you need it; you’re on your own for torches

• Speaking of riotous unrest, “Uncle” Randy Milholland will be the keynote speaker at the biennial Comic Studies Conference at the University of North Texas. The conference will be 22-23 March, and speakers slots are up for grabs [PDF] if you want to get all academic for an hour or two. If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to Milholland speak, he is really, really funny in front of an audience, not to mention thoughtful, engaging, self-deprecating, and willing to use naughty words. If there’s a Q&A component (there usually isn’t in keynote speeches), get him to do the Fluffmodeus voice.
• I got an email over the weekend from Dante Shepherd, telling me about a new project he’s dropped a few hints to, here and there. Long story short, a guy who does his comics work primarily in chalk has decided to get all narrative. Professor Blackboard has teamed up with artist Joan Cooke and will in the coming months be launching a strip about hapless grad students dealing with improbably hazardous research. Not hazardous in the make sure you use safety goggles sense, more in the keep the car running and get us out of here quickly and maybe we won’t all die horribly sense.

  Shepherd doesn’t want me to give away the big gag on the first page (which he has shown me, and which is making me giggle as I type this), so let’s just say that PhD Unknown (working title) reminds me of something written by Internet Jesus and drawn by Stuart Immonen that you may have read previously and if you haven’t what the hell is wrong with you.

_______________
¹ Of course there will be radio in the future; it’s the one medium that will never be superseded.

² Follow that link and give Culture Shock 1913 a listen; it’s really good.

Or, TCAF Turns Ten, as the press release I’ve just received informs me. Reliably one of the best showrunners each year, Chris Butcher has put together a stellar lineup for this year’s iteration (to be held 11 and 12 May), including headliners Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Taiyo Matsumoto, Raina Telgemeier, Blutch, Gengoroh Tagame, Dash Shaw, Maurice Vellekoop¹, plus the crème de la crème of webcomics (pick ’em out from the list here, there’s too many for me to hunt ’em all down).

Quick shots:

• Kazu Kibuishi (Daisy Kutter, Copper, the Flight anthology, and a little thing called Amulet) announced yesterday that he’ll be one of the judges (along with some guy named “Pendleton”, which is surely not an actual name people give their kids) for this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition for schoolkids. The idea of art contests often brings up hard feelings in the independent arts, but the terms for the D4G contest seem pretty reasonable:
  

  11. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: As between Google and the Entrant, the Entrant retains ownership of all intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) in and to the Doodle (excluding Google’s rights in the Google logo/trademark). As a condition of entry, Entrant grants Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, transferable, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display the Doodle for any purpose, including display on the Google website, without any attribution or compensation to Entrant. Entries will not be returned. [boldface original]

  Google can use your Doodle, but it’s still yours, and I’ll note that the prizes are far more fabulous than for any art contest when I was in school. The top 50 winners get a trip to New York City and a Wacom digital tablet; places 2 through 5 get US$5000 scholarships, and the overall winner gets a Chromebook, a US$30,000 scholarship, plus a US$50,000 technology grant for their school².

• Courtesy of John Campbell, michaelkeaton.net for all your Michael Keaton needs, with special guest appearance by Mister Rogers.
• As promised, you can now make your own Ryan North.

_______________
¹ Of whom, Matsumoto, Blutch, and Tagame are making North American debuts.

² If homeschooled, they get a US$5000 grant for home, and get to designate a local library or public school to receive the remaining US$45,000.

Let’s recognize some achievements today, yes? Are achievements still a thing, or do the kids have a new word for them? Cheevs? Cheevos? Cheev-a-rama-lama-ding-dongs? Peoples is doing things, and we should notice.

• The Academy Award nominations hit this morning, and I should like to mention that among the Best Animated Feature nods is one for ParaNorman (a terrific film, by the way), whose production company is well-integrated into the webcomics world, what with people like Vera Brosgol and Graham Annable working there and webcomickers being given super-cool artifacts from the making of the film.¹
• Speaking of awards season, we’ve mentioned in the recent past that nominations are open for the Hugo Awards and the NCS Awards; now it’s time for the Eisners to collect worthy nominees. The relevant section is not too different from past years:
  

  The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2012. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

• Noted yesterday: webcartoonist/roboticist/popularizer of science Jorge Cham is talking about What We Don’t Know and the gaps in our scientific knowledge² via the auspices of TEDx³. One advantage to being a cartoonist when you hit the speaker’s stage — when it’s time to project something on the big board for everybody to see, comics are more interesting that slides full of text. Go watch The Science Gap: Jorge Cham at TEDxUCLA and then ask yourself: what don’t we know?
• Almost missed: John Kovalic has been creating Dork Tower strips since about forever, initially as a monthly comic in a now-defunct gaming magazine, and then several times a week. I’ll admit it dropped off my radar a while ago, but I’m glad to say I noticed something yesterday: as of 1 January, 2013, Dork Tower has been around a phenomenal sixteen years, with no signs of stopping.
• Similarly, I had fallen away from regular reading of Tom Brazelton’s Theater Hopper (largely because I’m not into movies enough to be the core audience, and partly because do you know how many comics I read in a day already?), but I did manage to notice that Brazelton wrapped the nearly-ten year old strip on 31 December 2012.

  Since then, he’s launched a Kickstarter to produce the last seven years of TH as e-books, as well as converting the first three years, which were dead-tree printed. A Kickstarter which just ticked over the (very modest) goal yesterday with nearly a month still to go, as it turns out. If you want to get ten e-books with nearly a decade’s worth of comics, such can be yours for as little as US$35, which is really a great bargain when you think of it — 35 bucks for about 3500 days, or a penny a day. You’ve got a change jar somewhere — crack it open.

_______________
¹ I should note that one of those receiving a animation maquette was Ryan North, who at the time was living but has since exploded and thus is possibly a zombie himself now. If you got one of these gifts from Laika, take care that you don’t explode also.

² Where “our” knowledge refers to both the scientific community and that of society at large.

³ Contrary to rumor, TEDx is not A little-known cousin of Malcolm X, although he has spent his career organizing a series of multidisciplinary symposia by any means necessary.

Not nearly so much going on. But you know what? That’s okay! Because we’re Young Ones. Bachelor boys. Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists. And now I get to find out who in my audience is as middle-aged as I am.

• New Jellaby, courtesy of creator Kean Soo. I miss Jellaby something fierce, but as long as Keaner’s working on new stuff, I suppose we can all muddle through somehow.
• New Dr McNinja collection, which I think I mentioned I picked up last month. To elaborate on my micro-est of reviews then, Timefist makes the extremely involved, mythology-heavy, and long-running Army of One–Space Savers–Futures Trading mega-arc much easier to follow than a page-at-a-time pace.

  Also, it has the entirely adorable Judy Gets A Kitten and the Axe Cop crossover, Stolen Pizza, Stolen Lives. As the years go by, Christopher “Doc” Hastings becomes only more madcap, somehow.

• Speaking of Axe Cop, we now have a premiere date for the Axe Cop animated series: Saturday, 27 July, 11:00pm on FOX.
• Kristen Siebecker, original showrunner of MoCCA Fest, and certified sommelier, is continuing her work demystifying the fruit of the vine and helping people learn to drink like grown-ups (that is, to be able to tell what’s good from what’s bad, and to get into the habits of drinking better stuff, not more stuff). Her previous iterations of the Popping Your Cork series have been noted with discount codes, and the next session is no exception.

  Those of you¹ in Manhattan on Wednesday, 30 January from 6:15pm can spend 90 minutes learning about wine that makes the winter less dreary, and this time she’s got a chef buddy coming by with tasty little nibbles to go with. Popping Your Cork: Winter Blends goes for US$25, but because you’re cool, you can use discount code FRIEND15 for a 15% discount. The fun happens at Simple Studios, 134 W 29th St (2nd floor).

_______________
¹ Of legal drinking age, naturally.

Hoo boy, where to start? Since we spoke last on Friday, the following things have occurred:

• In their continuing march to dominate independent artist merchandising, TopatoCo now has its own building, which is being leased from Sheriff Pony LLC¹. As a measure of the growth of TopatoCo, consider this brief history from TopatoCo Vice President of Kicking Ass and Taking Names Holly Rowland:
  

  It may not look like much, but it is a huge deal to us. Ten years ago, TopatoCo was a shelving unit in Jeffrey’s bedroom in Oklahoma. Seven years ago, it was a third of an office space. Five years ago, it was one full office space. As of now it is four consecutive spaces, five employees, fifty three clients, a 44” giclee’ fine art printer, and a publishing imprint.

  We have big plans for 2013. Stay tuned.

• In her continuing march to dominate independent artist themed anthology collections, Spike announced the contributors to The Sleep of Reason, a list which includes the likes of Aaron Diaz², Evan Dahm, and Carla Speed McNeil, three creators whose world-building will lend itself towards the creeptacular.

  Not convinced? How about KC Green, and Sophie Goldstein, whose work often tends towards the cutely humorous with an underscore of sorrow verging on menace? Not convinced yet? How about the no-brainer of the year, the woman whose work is the definition of atmospheric, existential fear-inducing dread, Emily Carroll? Oh, and 22 other creators/creator teams, including Spike herself. This one is going to rock any sock left tragically unrocked by Smut Peddler.

• Ryan Estrada, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via the medium of an online gameshow, has announced a launch date for Asking For Trouble: Thursday, 10 January (that would be this week) at 9:00pm EST. I know that the event invite says Japan Standard Time (GMT+9) instead of Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5), but I’ve confirmed with Estrada that it’s EST.
• Danielle Corsetto, last mentioned as stretching outside webcomics via two graphic novels she’s writing, has announced the first of them as an Adventure Time original graphic novel, to be illustrated by Zack Sterling, entitled Playing With Fire. It’ll be the story of Flame Princess’s romance with Finn, clock in at 160 pages, and show up in April. Sharp eyed readers may note that Corsetto is working on two graphic novels, but I’ve confirmed with her that the second is not another AT book; it will be an original story for another publisher.
• Returning from hiatus: Jim Zub and Shun Hong Chan’s Makeshift Miracle, moving on to what will form the second volume of the rewritten series. Less a return and more a new-material launch: Dave Roman’s Astronaut Academy will shortly have a second volume, and it’s serializing courtesy of publisher :01 Books. And because Roman loves you, Astronaut Academy: Re-Entry already has 25 pages of story ready for your enjoyment.
• The definitive numbers for Child’s Play 2012 came out on Friday, and the result is staggering: more than five million dollars were raised last year, eclipsing the prior year’s record by nearly 50%. For reference, the Child’s Play history looks like this (all figures in US dollars):
  

  2003: $250,000
  2004: $310,000
  2005: $605,000
  2006: $1,024,000
  2007: $1,300,000
  2008: $1,434,377
  2009: $1,780,870
  2010: $2,294,317
  2011: $3,512,345
  2012: $5,085,761
  To date: $17,596,670

  Not a bad first decade all at all.

• Finally, sneaking in just before press time, Bernie Hou announced on Twitter that Comic Chameleon (last mentioned three weeks back) is opening its submission process so that more creators can get in on the webcomics reading app that doesn’t screw them over. Looks like launch on CC is getting close.

_______________
¹ Sheriff Pony LLC exists as a distinct entity from The Topato Corporation for reasons of Business.

² The Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

Just a little Marceline for y’alls; Meredith Gran referenced a bunch of album covers in her interior art and covers, and it’s fun seeing how they compare.

• One of the things that I really enjoyed about participating in the process that eventually produced the first NCS Division Award for On-Line Comics was the sense that NCS President Tom Richmond was planning ahead. I have written elsewhere about challenges faced by the NCS in terms of demographics, in terms of seeing the need to change but also overcome decades of tradition to do so. I’ve written about how the inaugural On-Line Comic division award wasn’t perfect the first time around, and how that’s okay. Perfect is the enemy of progress, and this award will continue to change.

  Tom Richmond was out in front of all of those discussions. It’s my belief that he, more than anybody else, was responsible for getting that first On-Line Comics division award approved, with the intention of adding to and tweaking it until it really does cover the breadth of work being done online (which may be about the time that the need for a separate online track attrites and all cartoonists are just cartoonists). That first round of add-tos and tweaks is here:

  Last year the NCS had a single division that was purposefully restricted to only daily strip formats as a way to test out their process. This year they are expanding it into two divisions, Long Form and Short Form.

  Online Comics: Short Form — Unlike last year, this division includes daily strip, single panel, Sunday strip, or partial/single page formats. Short form comics should be able to stand alone as a single narrative, even if it is part of a longer storyline like an adventure strip. They can be full page comics, like a “Life in Hell”, but if so they should be single page narratives that do not serialize their storylines.

  Online Comics: Long Form — These would be ongoing narratives told in full page formats. Basically an online comic book or graphic novel, where the story is fully serialized. [boldface original]

  I am excited that an organization built on tradition and The Way Things Were can look at itself and say, We could perform our mission better¹. I am excited to see which of the people that had critiques (sometimes quite pointed) of the NCS’s initial steps into recognizing webcomics work will recognize that there was a good-faith effort on the part of everyone involved last year, and that the same intentions hold this year. I’m excited to see growth is possible, and if the form of the awards this year is not perfect², to know that they will be closer to where they should be next year, and the year after that, and the one after that³.

• Speaking of awards, Howard Tayler (my evil twin) points out that the Hugo Awards have opened nominations, and that the Graphic Story category is once again up for contention. A couple things notable about that category:
  • Last year, it was removed from experimental consideration and given permanent status
  • The Foglios having removed themselves from consideration after sweeping the first three year, and Ursula Vernon not having an entry this year, we should be looking at a non-repeat winner this year
  • In the existence of this category, webcomics have won every year, beating out sometimes very large, very popular work from major publishers; it would be a shame to see that streak broken

  Just off the top of my head, in addition to Tayler’s own Schlock Mercenary, Christopher Baldwin’s Spacetrawler, Kris Straub’s Starslip, and Dave Kellet’s Drive would be worthy nominees. Anybody that’s eligible to make nominations that agrees with me, get on that.

• There’s been a flurry of webcomics creators reaching outside their usual gigs to engage in other kinds of stuff-making. In the past few days, I’ve noticed Danielle Corsetto writing two graphic novels, David Malki ! experimenting with motion-control puppets, the omnipresent Ryan Estrada teasing a game show, and Christopher Wright is almost more of a novelist these days (using the webcomic model, naturally). We can argue the relative merits of foxes and hedgehogs if you like, I’m just glad to have additional channels for creators to entertain me.

_______________
¹ In the sense of being more inclusive in its membership; given that a part of the NCS mission is to throw a kick-ass weekend of fun and really wonderful people and booze, they could not possibly get any better.

² And guess what? They’re not, because we live in an imperfect reality, so let’s do what we can to make them better.

³ Remind me to tell you the joke about the physicist, the mathematician, and the engineer in Hell, being taunted by the Devil with the possibility of sex only if they could overcome Zeno’s Paradox.