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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and there were comics, too.

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

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

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

Spam of the day:

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

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

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

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

This Friday has been the least Fridayish I can recall in quite some time; it’s all worked out in the end, but man I was up to my ass in cocodylomorphans for a while there. Here’s some thing to consider:

• Ryan North (aka The Toronto Man-Mountain) and David Malki ! (aka The Jack of All Trades) both hit on the topic of How Not To Be Terrible In Society And/Or On The Internet in their strips today. I propose we take them as guides for all future human conduct. We can all wear sea lion shirts while we do so.
• I don’t know much about the prior work of Jules Faulkner, but I saw way too many people whose work I do know tweet today about the launch of Faulkner’s new webcomic to ignore it. Knight and Dave — the story of Sir Iris and his caprine sidekick, Dave — will run on Fridays with Mondays and Wednesdays possible if you make with support over at Faulkner’s Patreon. Too soon to tell where this one is going, but so far, it’s hella cute and cartoony.
• TopatoCon¹ haven’t announced any more exhibitors, but they did announce that they’re now allowing half tables, so we may see the number of guests increasing from the 70 or so expected to 100 or more. Neat!

I have to clean house a little, so for the first time please enjoy the plural majesty of the
Spams of the day:

Hey webmaster,When you write some blogs and share with us,that is a hard work for you but share makes you happly right?

I’m perfectly happly to not work hard, actually.

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Dude, have you seen me? If I turn sideways I disappear. The last thing I need is any kind of weight loss system.

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¹ I started wondering why TopatoCon’s twitter is @topatocon2015 and not @topatocon, and then I found out: @topatocon is a dude that’s a fan of the LA Lakers and an LA TV meteorologist.

So just yesterday I was talking about people trolling Kickstarters and wouldn’t you know it, today brought forth an example of the most extreme dickish behavior as an example:

Our Kickstarter is currently listed as funded but 90% is coming from a $9000 pledge from an account that hasnt successfully backed a project

The project in question, to put together a Boys Love comic anthology, presently shows funding of just under US$12,000, but if nine grand of that is from one person with no backer history, I’ma go out on a limb and say that somebody decided that just because he¹ doesn’t like seeing dudes make out, he should do everything possible to undermine people who do like seeing dudes make out.

So thanks for that, Mr Jerk. I don’t know if I would have heard about Boy, I Love You or not; I doubt that I’d be promoting it, but since you’re determined to play the role of spoiler, the least I can do is make it clear that the project still needs your support. Hell, I’m considering tossing them a few bucks just to help offset your desire to spike a project that was doing you know harm. Oh, and Kickstarter? That set-a-threshold-for-requiring-pledge-approval is looking better by the day.

• In new less likely to make me despair of humanity, last year’s Beat the Blerch runs were so successful and oversubscribed that not only will there be a 2015 iteration, it’s spreading² beyond the bounds of original site Carnation, Washington to Sacramento, California and (approximately my stomping grounds) Morristown, New Jersey. I don’t know about Washington or Sacto, but northern Jersey is beautiful at that time of year and I really want to go check out what a bunch of Blerch-runners will look like crowded into a rather quiet, rather wealthy, rather Republican, tastefully-decorated Revolutionary War-era town³.

  My guess is it’s going to be glorious, but — alas — I won’t be able to verify the amusingness of the contrasts, because the New Jersey dates conflict with TopatoCon. I’m guessing that Matthew Inman and his helper elves will put on a terrific event, and that it’ll be the talk of the town until the next one comes around, presumably in 2016. For those not able to make any of the locations, you can order a Virtual Race Kit from next week, and stage your own Blerch run — although you’ll be responsible for staffing your own Blerch cosplayers and sourcing cupcakes, Nutella, and magic purple drink on your own.

  Best of luck to all the runners at all the events, and if you see Matt Inman tell him I said hi from TopatoCon.

• Hey, kids! You know what today is? Only the most wonderful day of the year, that’s what! Today is …

  Bradmas

  That’s right, today is the day we celebrate the gift the world received when the magnificently sexy Brad Guigar blessed us by being born. Today is a day for comic books, old vaudeville routines, terrible puns, bit-champing, and laughter. So, so much laughter; laughter that has the power to kill … and well, mostly just kill. Happy birthday, Brad!

Spam of the day:
Gets the day off for Bradmas.

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¹ Of course it’s a guy.

² Much like your waistline if you don’t beat the Blerch.

³ Also, there is a significant Orthodox population, so lots of stuff you’d expect to be open on a Saturday will be closed, but likely open on Sunday.

Today is 7 April 2015, and as such marks one year since the last update of Achewood. I do not say this to shame Chris Onstad; as well established precedent clearly tells us, Chris Onstad is not my bitch and we will get more Achewoods when he is good and ready¹. I do so merely to point out that we have reached the fallow point where Achewood gets designated in the blogroll as being on hiatus, and to remind all readers that far from being dead, RSS is a wonderful thing.

• Speaking of hiatuses (hiati?), the return from hiatus (however brief the return may be) might be termed a resurrection, and over the weekend we got a double-sized Wonderella on just that very theme. The hiatus necessary to put together the latest print collection (and to re-release the first two in an omnibus edition) is nearly done, and we may look forward to more non-adventures from 2 May² forward. Hooray!
• Speaking of best things ever (we were so, check the footnotes, Chumpy), could there be a better combination than Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and Trudy Cooper of Oglaf [NSFW if you work somewhere lame] combining their skills to produce an educational guide to work-safe fetishes for Oh Joy, Sex Toy [NSFW: wang, adverts]? No, there could not, especially when it give OJST co-creator Erika Moen the opportunity to draw the single best panel in the history of webcomics. Everybody else take a breather, no need to continue to better yourselves — the highest peak has been claimed.
• Critical question for all: Anthony Clark needs to know about how you interact with dogs. It’s for science.
• Completely expected successes one: David “Damn You,” Willis “!” launched a Kickstarter for the fourth Dumbing of Age collection at midnight EDT and funded out in less than twelve hours. In fact, at just past the fifteen hour mark, he’s raised more money and has nearly as many backers as the entire campaign for the first DoA collection, and I see nothing to contradict the history he has of exceeding the previous campaign by US$15,000 to 20,000, which would put this one somewhere in the vicinity of 90 grand by the time he’s done in a month.
• Completely expected successes two: I did not realize until today that I wanted to read a manga-influenced magical girl story until Mary Cagle of Let’s Speak English and Kiwi Blitz decided to team up with Oskar Vega to bring us Sleepless Domain. There will be fights with monsters, which is all that anybody requires from magical girl/sentai-type stories. I’m going to be keeping my eye on this one.

Spam of the day:

We used some lube and it reached places I never experienced before. Renee says sometimes we treat our pets better than our mates: “You speak sweetly to your dog or cat, you pet them, you touch them, you feed them, and you walk them.

Wow. Tying into two different items that I wrote about today? Is this great spam or the greatest spam?

________________
¹ And we’ll like it.

² Best anniversary gift ever?

We’re headed in several different directions today. It’s an adventure!

• I need to start this first item with a disclaimer, and ask you to believe that while I would have certainly written about this regardless, how I learned about the item in question may give the appearance of a quid pro quo. Leaving aside all the roundabout verbiage, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) emailed me over the weekend with an extraordinarily generous offer — an original strip from his always-amusing Planet Of Hats, my choice, gratis.

  He mentioned that I should look over the list of available strips to see if the one I wanted¹ was available or taken, as he’d launched a Patreon and top contributors could call dibs on a strip. Which is how I learned that David Morgan-Mar, the man who started webcomicking a month before Ryan North, the man who famously has not sought to turn his thousands (to potentially infinite number) of strips into anything resembling a career and does this for fun (his own and his audience’s) had started a Patreon to defray the costs associated with all of his internet-shared japery.

  I’ll note that his campaign has the lowest milestone goals I’ve yet seen on a Patreon — ten dollars a month² to cover the costs of pens and paper, $35/month for hosting and registration on all of his sites (ten in all), $50/month to get one new LEGO brand construction brick toy-based Irregular Webcomic strip a week, and $75/month for two new strips a week.

  Guys, this is chump change, and please believe me when I say that a) we would be having this conversation with or without Morgan-Mar’s incredibly generous gift, and b) that after putting in what I’d estimate to be literal tens of thousands of hours on his various comics, this is just about the very least he could be asking for in way of audience support. His has been the most one-way transaction of laugh-chuckles in the history of webcomics; it’s time he was shown how much he’s appreciated.

• Still on Patreon for a moment as I’d like to point out another act of incredible generosity by a webcomicker, and with a far greater impact on somebody’s life than some free artwork. Chris Rusche hit some tough times in his personal life last year, and his readers urged him to set up a Patreon so as to offer support — which enabled him to make his comic his main gig, and not coincidentally allow him to care for his kids (one of whom has a chronic health condition).

  So when Rusche saw another artist in similar circumstances whose tablet blew up over on Patreon, he organized his readers to resolve that and has been pushing as much attention towards her campaign as he can. The beneficiary of this kindness is Ginny Higerd, whose work you can find here; she may need to add a few more high-end milestone goals, seeing as how all the existing ones have now been filled. And kudos to Rusche, for using his powers (and followers) for Good and for Awesome.

• Speaking of using your powers for good, yesterday Jon Rosenberg and family were returning from a Florida vacation when they were involved in a multi-car collision. All are unhurt, thankfully, but at last report the Rosenbergs were trapped in a Denny’s in South Carolina, which is far from the best Denny’s to be at without good transportation options. Maybe this would be a good time to look at his Patreon?
• The list of confirmed TopatoCon 2015 guests now stands at four, with KC Green, Jeph Jacques, and Jess Fink now joined by Tom Siddell (who you can also see at this weekend’s MoCCA Fest alongside Magnolia Porter). And since we’re mentioning Siddell, I want to particularly congratulate him on his current story arc, which has me twisted up in knots, anticipating each new installment, even as he puts our main character through the wringer.

  It’s a masterful job of storytelling, causing an emotional response where I’m feeling protective of Annie, outraged on her behalf, and find my visceral loathing of her until-now-absent father growing by the day. It’s been ten years that we’ve been following Annie’s story and I’m well-invested in her narrative. Story threads that have been woven over that decade are being violently disrupted, and making the agent of all this upending be the person that should be apologizing to Annie (for his sudden and prolonged absence, particularly when he most needed her) is a bold stroke.

  But seriously — Anthony Carver is a jerk, fuck that guy, I also hope he gets laser–cowed.

• New strip alert! Otaku Dad looks to be hilarious, which is hardly a surprise as it’s coming from Ronny Filyaw of Whomp!; just one page and a cover so far, but the premise in that one page is delicious.
• Live action Automata, possibly under production as soon as the fall and released next year? Intriguing.

Spam of the day:

Hi my name is Janette and I just wanted to drop you a quick note here instead of calling you.

a) It is very unlikely that is your name, and b) people that call me are subject to significant levels of verbal abuse. I once reduced a I am calling from Microsoft Technical Support, we have detected a virus on your computer to a frothing rage. Then again, it’s pretty easy to provoke that when you study the work of the master.

_______________
¹ Which presented a dilemma — which episode of Star Trek would make the best fodder for a humorous piss-take? Something intentionally silly like Planet Of The Gansters A Piece of the Action? Something no-doubt well-intentioned but more than a litte train-wrecky, like Planet Of The Primitive Blonde Americans (Not Native Americans, They Get An Episode Next Season) And Yellow Peril Communist Stereotypes The Omega Glory? Something well-intentioned and a bit heavy-handed but not entirely train-wrecky like Racism Is Bad, Mmmkay? Let That Be your Last Battlefield? Something completely off-the-rails insane like Space Hippies Don’t Like Herbert The Way To Eden? Coming near the end of Trek’s run, Morgan-Mar’s skills ought to be nicely sharpened by the time that one comes up in the rotation. Ultimately, I went with a strip yet to be drawn — the ur–Planet Of story — one which should sum up everything in SF’s tendency towards every planet is just one thing: Planet Of The Nazis Patterns of Force.

² I’m assuming ten US dollars a month, since Patreon in a US-based company, but don’t discount that he’s looking for ten Australian dollars, which would be about seven and a half American at today’s exchange rates.

Lots of people are already halfway into ham-mode, what with Easter and all; even those who are not believers tend to go big on the ham. I only have two brief items for you before I call it a week and take a nap.

Item the First: New TopatoCon guests announced! While exhibitor applications are open for a couple more weeks, we now have our second and third confirmed guests, Jeph Jacques and Jess Fink. In the immor[t]al words of TopatoCon’s governing body:

We should put @JessFink and @jephjacques in a room and see who can draw the most boners in five minutes. #topatoconeventideas

I volunteer to be the timekeeper of this event.

Item the Second: I don’t know if you follow the nameless, heroic computer security specialist that tweets behind the façade of a world-ruling pop star, but InfoSec Taylor Swift has impressed the hell out of me with their knowledge, analysis of current security threats, and snark. Even better, as the person that ends up Designated Tech Guy At Family Gatherings, InfoSecTayTay has put together a hell of a timesaver: a guide to securing computers that I can point relatives to instead of doing it all myself.

If you end up being your own tech support, you could do worse than bookmarking Decent Security (work in progress, so revisit often) and examining your own habits and practices. It’s rather Windows 7-centric at the moment, but the page titled Computer Security Is Not Magic applies to everybody.

Okay, that’s it. Enjoy whatever you may celebrate this weekend, and don’t forget: chocolate goes on sale Monday.

Spam of the day:

My spouse and I stumbled over here from a different page and thought I might check things out. I like what I see

What you and your spouse do is none of my business, please do not involve me in your sex games okay thanks bye.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m late. Let’s do this.

• Evan Dahm’s got me convinced that I’ll need a copy of his Moby-Dick Illustrated. His first chapter illustration has the feel of a woodcut crossed with an engraving, and a brooding, heavy quality that pervades the atmosphere in the same way that lightness and hope suffused his Wonderful Wizard of Oz drawings. I never had much desire to read Moby-Dick, but if it inspired work like this, I’ll need to give it a fair try.
• MoCCA Fest will be having a dedicated lounge for special sponsor Wacom, all day both days of the show. You’ll be abe to see (and play with!) Wacom’s various products, and there will be five demos spread across the two days from a variety of well-known artists.
• Abby Howard started her webcomicking with a vaguely autobio strip, broke through to a wider audience on Strip Search, and parlayed that into a hell of big Kickstart for The Last Halloween, which continues to delight and startle. She’s turning full circle back to that vaguely autobio¹ strip and Junior Scientist Power Hour will collect the best strips since its launch into a 200 page book, provided the funding goal is reached oh who am I kidding, it’s Abby, people love Abby, she’s going to crush this.

  Since it’s not an every-strip-reprint project, I can only hope that my personal favorites of her strips — Sadness Brownies, Creepy Dog — will be included. An added bonus in some tiers will be Junior Paleontologist Power Hour, which could be an expanded version of the early strip of the same name, the more recent five-part maxi-series How To Dig Up Dinosaurs, or some combo platter of the two. Regardless, I’m in, because Abby loves dinosaurs makes good comics about them.

Spam of the day:

This design is incredible! You obviously know how to keep a rezder entertained. Between your wit and your videos, I waas almost moved to start myy own blolg (well, almost…HaHa!) Fantaetic

Sir or Madam, I believe that you may not be perceiving reality as it actually is. Please check that you are in a safe space, and call for medical assistance.

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¹ Does anybody believe that 80s Tom Hanks really lives in a hole in her bedroom? Actually, now that I think of it, it is entirely possible.

Okay, one April Fools, because Emily Carroll’s work is too spooky for some people, she made the ending of her critically- and popularly-acclaimed His Face All Red less mysterious and spooky.

• Congrats to the nominees in the NCS division awards for long- and short form webcomics. Repeat nominee (and past winner) Vince Dorse for the now-concluded Untold Tales of Bigfoot, Harvey- and Eisner laureate Mike Norton for Battlepug, and Minna Sundberg for Stand Still, Stay Silent are showing the world what you can do with long form; Danielle Corsetto’s just-concluded Girls With Slingshots, Jonathan Lemon’s Rabbits Against Magic, and Rich Powell’s Wide Open are the esteemed representatives of the short form.

  I should also mention that in other categories — graphic novel, gag cartoons, editorial cartoons — you’ve got indy- and webcomics types like Jen Sorensen, Jillian Tamaki, Mike Maihack, and Liza Donnelly recognized; between that, and seeing the animation categories recognize The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Song of the Sea, and Over the Garden Wall, it appears that new, bold works are getting their due consideration. I’m not a member of the NCS, but I’m pulling for Sundberg and Corsetto over in webcomics; best of luck to all the nominees. The NCS awards will be handed out at the NCS Reubens Weekend in Washington, DC, Memorial Day Weekend.

• Congratulations as well to Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh for wrapping up Lucky Penny yesterday. It’s been a goodly while since Johnny Wander was an autobio/diary strip, and while we’re going to be getting strips about Ota’s trip to Japan in 2014, I doubt it will ever entirely be autobio again. Nevertheless, Lucky Penny was a damn good read, and the fact that it got completed despite Ota’s frequent wrist impairments¹ is a monument to either work ethic or stubbornness to the point of insanity. Read it again from the beginning, and look for it in print when it’s released.
• The first guest of TopatoCon 2015 has been announced and it’s all-around great cartoonist KC Green, whose new comic (on which we speculated yesterday), He Is A Good Boy, is a now running and hitting on all the familiar Greenian themes — a semi-likeable protagonist, the requirement to grow up despite the desire for things to stay the same, a deep ambivalence (bordering on loathing) about things staying the same, and sudden outbursts of profane (yet I suspect utterly earned) fury. Oh, and the main character is an acorn who doesn’t want to go plant himself. It’s gonna be a good one, folks.
• Zach Weinersmith has his hand in so many projects it’s tough to keep up, but one that he keeps circling back around to is BAHFest — the Festival of Bad Ad-Hoc Hypotheses — which aids the cause of science literacy by getting science types to laugh at themselves before going back out to show the world what is and what is not science.

  Weinersmith will be talking to public radio’s Science Friday this Friday about BAHFest, which is sure to be the most amusing segment until this year’s coverage of the IgNobel Awards. Check here for local NPR stations, and then with that local station to see if they run the show live 2:00pm-4:00pm EDT; alternately you can listen to SciFri segments at their website following the broadcast, or via iTunes.

• Some day, Randall Munroe may tire of elaborate, experimental comics that act as crowdsourced idea factories, but today is not that day. Start clicking and don’t forget to eat at some point.

Spam of the day:

Mayo Clinic Study-Eradicate Diabetes

While more plausible than your previous attempt to hook me in by claiming NASA had figured out the cure for diabetes, I still somehow doubt the truthfulness of your claim. I’ve been up to the Mayo Clinic for work, and I’ve rarely met a group of people so dedicated to their work² and you know what? They have an actual public affairs office, one that does not announce major medical breakthroughs — and a cure for diabetes would rank up there with the polio vaccine and the eradication of smallpox in terms of medical breakthroughs — by direct-emailing me at my blog on webcomics. Try harder, you horrible people.

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¹ Finding herself under doctor’s orders to not use her right hand, she taught herself to draw just as well with her left, which she then promptly injured from overuse so the right wouldn’t be jealous. She’s gotten better about pacing herself but make no mistake — this is a woman that can draw better than you with either hand.

² In the main lobby there is a display case showing the gifts that they give you for your 5th anniversary working for the Clinic, 10th, 15th, etc. They went all the way up to sixty-five friggin’ years, which I believe is the definition of dedication.

No common theme today, just a bunch of different stuff.

• Let’s start by talking about a new comics that’s going to launch tomorrow; longtime readers of this page know that I rarely pay attention to brand-new webcomics, preferring to see a body of work before deciding if I like it or not. The exception is for established creators whose work is already well-regarded … especially if those creators have a history of making different kinds of comics over time. It’s hard to think of a single creator that made more different kinds of comics (with the common thread: Damn Good) than KC Green, so news of a new ongoing strip? I’m there:
  

  Tomorrow I have a new comic dropping it’s pants to show the world what its made of. It’s called “He is a Good Boy” and you can follow it on tumblr at this address. There is an actual website, but I won’t be announcing that til tomorrow when it is officially “launched.” But there is a website, this I promise. No april foolin’. Tomorrow.

  Even better, Green showed us all some love with more work dropping early:

  So like tomorrow’s pretty full w/ my new comic “He is a Good Boy” dropping and stuff. I don’t want BACK to get overlooked.

  so have a new BACK…….. TODAY http://backcomic.com/

  I’m excited to read BACK today, I’m excited to see He Is A Good Boy tomorrow, I’m just generally excited. Everybody say nice things about KC.

• Speaking of new comics, John Allison appears to have settled on a model of let’s do distinct stories from around Tackleford in bursts of a month or two instead of half a year, following on the maybe-last-ever Bobbins story with next week’s launch (ha, ha) of a Charlotte & Shauna story … in space. Add to this last week’s print-comic Giant Days #1 (of 6) and I think that Allison may be on to something: 75 – 100 pages in a story, long enough to develop a plot, short enough to not get bored or bogged down. I think the coming months (and years) are going to be his best yet.
• Back in November we mentioned that Eric Colossal’s Rutabaga would be getting the book treatment. Know what came out today? Rutabaga: The Adventure Chef (book 1 of hopefully many), in glorious color. You can enjoy a preview of the book starting here and compare to the original black & white starting here; I think you will agree that the color looks great, and resolve to get copies for both yourself and younger readers of your acquaintance.
• Attention pros: Harvey Award nominations are now open, with just about every single one of you eligible for something or other. Fill out the form, return it by 11 May, don’t be shy about promoting your work. Worst that happens? Nothing — in which case, your self-promotion didn’t result in embarrassing attention. Best that happens? You get recognized for your work and hopefully get over feeling excessively modest. Go. Promote.
• Final word today is given to David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator), on the value of creating webcomic after webcomic, strip after strip (see footnote 3), with no intention of ever making it a career:
  

  The non-monetary reward? Making something, and touching people’s lives.

  Respect.

Spam of the day:

Protect and Beautify Your Garage Floor

I don’t normally think of my garage floor (which is made of poured concrete) as either needing protection or possessing the quality of beauty. Did I miss a day in Intro to Homeownership?

It’s coming up fast, folks! And you’ll see lots of webcomics (and webcomics-adjacent) folks there; usual disclaimer, there are others I’ve undoubtedly missed.

• Table 231: Tony Breed, cartoonist, DJ, gentleman about town.
• Table 314: Josh Neufeld (I love his collaboration with public radio’s Brooke Gladstone, The Influencing Machine).
• Table 320: Koyama Press; if they are the not great hope for comics, they’re damn close.
• Table 326: Evan Dahm; dare I hope that he has copies of his Wonderful Wizard of Oz with him?
• Table 328: Sam Bosma and Kali Ciesemier, of many different things.
• Table 340: Rachel Dukes has been tearing it up on the BOOM! books, and working on her first graphic novel.
• Table 354: the creators of Strong Female Protagonist, Brennan Lee Mulligan (words) and Molly Ostertag (pictures)
• Table 352: Sophie Goldstein (half the team behind Darwin Carmicheal Is Going To Hell and all of the team at Red Ink Radio). Along with her, Sylvan Migdal, who’s been at MoCCA since forever.
• Table 383A, Jordan Witt of The Organization of Ghost Hunters.
• Table 404: not an error, but the fine folks of :01 Books (the best folks).
• Table 423: Michelle Czajkowski of Ava’s Demon.
• Table 424: Magnolia Porter and Tom Siddell are, between them, on career-best streaks right now. So good, both of them.
• Table 425: Carey Pietsch has been paired up with Meredith Gran on the latest Marceline series; she’ll be joined by Janet Sung and Arielle Jovellanos, together forming creative forces behind Ladies of Literature.
• Table 450, Scott C of the Great Showdowns, adorable childrens books, and fine art collections everywhere.

Fun start at 11:00am on Saturday and Sunday, weekend after next, at Center 548 in Manhattan. See you there!

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