Hecka. Yeah. Now all I need is the limited-edition poster and the book of the film and I’ll be as set as you possibly can be. Freddave, thanks so much for this. Oh, and if you’d like to see STRIPPED on the big screen, there are at least three screenings coming up. Only thing is, the big screen don’t get you director’s commentary, which is on the DVD, so maybe grab that?

• Y’know, Professoressa and Professor Foglio have been doing this comics thing for a long damn time, and they must surely know by now that their fans are going to buy their books, but it’s still got to make you feel good when Girl Genius book 13 clears 100% of funding in something like 16 hours. As always, putting the Foglios on video is a treat and a half.
• Also a treat and a half — quite possibly two treats, if we’re being honest — is the news of a new comic from Steve Wolfhard. Forg the Winter Frog is short, but it’s making me smile like a maniac; here’s hoping that Wolfhard gifts us with more Forg in the future.
• Hey! Do you make comics? Are you in the New York City area? Thomas Crowell, author of a legal reference for filmmakers and a soon-to-be similar reference for comic book creators, will be the guest of the Media Law Collaborative of NYU’s law school on Monday, 14 April. He’ll be speaking on the topic of representing comics creators, from 4:00pm to 6:00pm with a cocktail reception to follow.

  Now it appears that the event is by invite only, which may possibly be garnered via this form. I’m not saying that a bunch of cartoonists can just show up and listen to the law guy and then get free booze, but none of us will know unless some of you try. More likely, you cartoonists will have to point it out to your lawyer or business guy or agent, but somebody you know should be going. If you can’t convince somebody to go, be sure to mention the free booze part.

The new webcomic by David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) launched today, and it shows great promise. Lagies and jenglefenz, I give you Planet of Hats, a week-by-week recap of Star Trek episodes! One can only hope that Morgan-Mar sticks with the strip after the original 79 episodes, so we can get TNG episodes like Planet of the Joggers.

• It’s been pretty common knowledge for a while that ReedPOP, the folks behind New York Comic Con and C2E2, partners of the various PAXes, and a bunch of other shows, have been planning a second show for New York City, one that actually focuses directly on comics rather than all the extraneous bits that often seem to be crowding the comics parts out of ostensible comic cons.

  But for the life of me, it’s only been in the past couple of days that I’ve really seen much about Special Edition NYC; an actual comics-centered show would be welcome, the North Pavilion of the Javits Center is a sizeable but reasonable space, and it could provide a high-traffic alternative for east coast webcomickers. This is one to watch.

• Kickstarts! On the one hand, the Doug Wright Awards — honoring the best in Canadian cartooning, with honors that are exceedingly well-curated and do not bog down into dozens of overly-specific categories — could use your help holding the annual awards ceremony (in conjunction with TCAF) this May. At present, they’re about 25% of the way to their (very modest) CDN$6150 goal.
• On the other hand, David “It’s!” Wills, creator of the Walky- and Dumbiverses, is (as of this writing) about 14 hours in and 96% of the way to funding the third Dumbing of Age collection. Willis-related Kickstarts are always interesting for the overfunding rewards that include extra comics for everybody.
• On the other other hand, I just thought I’d mention the fact that Smut Peddler 2014 is now over US$80,000, which means an extra US$650 per creator/creator team. Only 25 days to go, which means it’ll almost certainly touch US$100K, eclipsing Smut Peddler 2012, and providing creator bonuses over a thousand dollars. Hooray for porn!

The biggest missed opportunity of my life was when I attended the Chris Onstad/Great Outdoor Fight signing at Bergen Street Comics (RIP) and Clover Club, and when he asked who I wanted sketched in my copy I neglected to say Ramses Luther Smuckles. True story.¹ Anyway, The Man With The Blood On His Hands is back, with inner piece and advice for safer motoring.

• I’ve been obsessively reading and re-reading each installment of Kate Beaton’s latest reminiscence of her time in the Alberta tar sands, Ducks, as they’ve been released over the past week or so. All five parts are now collected in one place and they are mandatory reading.

  The tar sands are fraught with political controversy and subtext (in both Canada and the US, as it’s tar sands oil that will be shipped if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved), but Beaton’s story is — as always — focused on the people who find themselves at the center of the great events rather than the events themselves:

  It is a complicated place, it is not the same for all, and these are only my own experiences there. It is a sketch because I want to test how I would tell these stories, and how I feel about sharing them. A larger work gets talked about from time to time. It is not a place I could describe in one or two stories. Ducks is about a lot of things, and among these, it is about environmental destruction in an environment that includes humans.

  As much as I love her takes on history and literature (I don’t think better one-off comics exist than Beaton’s takes on on Musashi and Henson), the autobio comics are the pinnacle of Beaton’s craft. I could read her conversations with her younger self, or the small moments with her parents, or stories from Fort McMurray (which read like a war veteran’s tales of survival) for the rest of my life and never grow tired of them.

• Happy Tenthiversary to Chris Yates, who has been constructing the world’s most colorful, creative, and baffling puzzles for ten years now. To share the joy, it’s free shipping (US & Canada; discounted elsewhere) on Baffler!s all month, with free lucky cactus toys in every order. And as long as we’re doing the numbers, it appears that the highest-numbered Baffler! on Yates’s site is #2899, meaning just about 290 puzzles a year for ten years, or an average of one Baffler! every 30 hours. Watch them fingers around the scroll-saw blade, Chris, and keep puzzlecutting like a madman.
• The Harvey Awards are now accepting nominations for the best of comics produced in 2013; I’m sure that you can think of some that deserve consideration, but allow me a moment of politicking if you will — if you sumbitches don’t nominate Something Terrible for every damn category that it would qualify for, you suck.

  A quick scan of the ballot would suggest Best Cartoonist, Best Letterer, Best Inker, Best Colorist, Best Cover Artist, Best Single Issue or Story, Best Online Comics Work, Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation (Any Book, Magazine, Film, or Video That Contributes to the Understanding of Comics as an Artform), and Most Promising New Talent² as plausible categories. I’m sure you can think of other works deserving of notice, but this one’s an imperative. Go. Do.

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¹ I did get a very nice sketch of Cornelius Bear so that’s all good; it’s just … I could have had a sketch of Ramses Luther Smuckles!

² Okay, Dean Trippe’s not exactly a new talent here, but that hasn’t stopped anybody in the past.

On Friday I was wondering if the new center aisle configuration would work at MoCCA Fest and it turns out, it sure did. You walked up the stairs and into the hall, jogged around the Society of Illustrators table (perhaps taking the time to marvel the surprisingly short line for Fiona Staples) and there you had it in front of you — an aisle designed purely for travel, with access to nearly the entire show floor. It was brilliant, as long as you didn’t get caught up in any of the mooring lines for Charlie Brown.

Speaking of, Charlie Brown was not the best thing above eye-level in the hall — it was the navigational signs that were found at each end of each rank of tables, which made getting around the show trivially simple one you realized one little thing: the booth numbers on each signpost represented both sides of a fabric divider line. I’m pretty sure that one small change to the signs (maybe a horizontal variation on the u-turn symbol) and they’ll be perfect.

One could argue that the signs weren’t even really needed in a venue as small as the 69th Regiment Armory, but you know what? Nobody’s ever done signposting this well before, in a large venue or a small one, and maybe now we’ll see more shows taking up the idea. Yeah, it’ll take some detail-oriented planning, but dang was it a nice touch.

Speaking of detail-oriented planning, I want to recognize Neil Dvorak of Easy Pieces Comic for putting together the best table design I’ve ever seen. Nothing about the look-and-feel of table C8 existed but that it provided the impression that you were in Dvorak’s world now, and everything beyond his immediate proximity was the noise of the outside world and wouldn’t you rather be here where it’s nice and civilized?

It worked on me, and I was happy to pick up a packet of his individual, brief, conceptually linked comics and associated ephemera, which have left me with the impression of a documentary work looking at an askew world of bizarre happenings, corporation/cults, and one man’s search for sense in it all. If Welcome to Night Vale was crossed with a ’50s-era social hygiene film and existed in craft paper envelopes, it would look like Easy Pieces.

So that was my big discovery of the show. Along the way I was lucky enough to talk with some terrific creators about what they’re doing; this list includes (but is not limited to):

• Noelle Stevenson had a stack of the debut issue of Lumberjanes, in advance of the official launch this week. It’s great book.
• Tom Siddell came all the way to America and had a continuous stream of people bringing his (very large, very heavy, thus he didn’t bring any himself to sell) books to be signed, and to purchase his minis and artwork. If you missed out on your chance to see him, he’s got a meet-up tomorrow night in Manhattan. You’ll know it’s him because he looks exactly like his avatar.
• Magnolia Porter’s Sugar Crash mini is funny and heartfelt, and perfectly in keeping with her work on Monster Pulse. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Porter writes early teens better than anybody else in webcomics, because they reflect the fact that growing up isn’t a matter of age, it’s a matter of practice.

  Her characters try, and they fail more than they succeed, and sometimes they’re stupid and sometimes they’re mean (and they know that they shouldn’t be and don’t want to be, and yet it still happens) and slowly they become somebody new. Siddell and John Allison and damn good, but Porter is the best. The only thing that would make Monster Pulse better at what it’s trying to do would be an easily-found link to her store on the main page.

• Evan Dahm is approaching the end of Book 2 material for Vattu, but his next project will more likely be his illustrated Wizard of Oz project. Scott C has a new book releasing in a few months, Hug Machine; it’ll be his first children’s book as both writer and artist, and it looks terrific. David McGuire is approaching the point in the story when he can give us a new Gastrophobia collection.
• Box Brown has now signed his first copy of Andre The Giant: Life and Legend, mine to be precise. He’s starting to the feel the excitement in the run-up to release in a month, and expressed his appreciation for his editor at :01 Books — It was a big help to have somebody that doesn’t know wrestling to point out what would be confusing to ordinary people.
• Speaking of :01 Books, Gina Gagliano expressed the excitement that everybody is feeling over Scott McCloud’s next book, due out sometime next year. I bumped into Colleen Venable on the floor and thanked her for being my favorite book designer¹ and she very kindly gifted me a copy of the last book in her Guinea Pig: Pet Shop Private Eye series because she is awesome.
• Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell’s print version is in the process of being manufactured, which is the only reason I didn’t buy a copy from Sophie Goldstein; I did get the chance to talk to her about how unsettling I found her contribution to The Sleep of Reason. Seriously creepy, people.
• Ben Costa and Phil McAndrew were kind enough to sign books of theirs that I brought with me (as did Siddell; Dahm, Stevenson, and C signed their illustrations in my copy of To Be Or Not To Be — three down, a zillion to go).
• Jaya Saxena, Matt Lubchansky, and Maki Naro seemed to be having more fun than anybody else on the floor. There’s a lack of awkwardness and effort that I observed in them talking with people who both sought them out and those who casually wandered by; even those in the convention grind for a decade may not have mastered that skill, or find that it requires considerable effort. Somehow, they’ve managed to become comics creators (that most solitary of endeavours) without losing the trappings of sociability; this must be stopped before they accidentally destroy comics.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I ran into Brigid Alverson and Johanna Draper Carlson — two of my favorite people on the ink-stained wretch side of things — outside the Armory and we took some pictures together. After that, I completely missed seeing them again on the floor. Oddly enough, I’ve never met up with either Brigid or Johanna by intention; we always just seem to bump into each other, which is part of how I know it’s going to be a good show. Ladies, it’s always a pleasure.

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¹ Of all the things I never thought I’d have a “favorite” of, but dang if her work for :01 Books doesn’t grab me and make me want to read inside.

I trust that I’ll see you there? We’ve already mentioned that many fine creators who will be in attendance, but somehow missed including David McGuire on that list so let’s address that now: David McGuire will be at MoCCA Fest, at table C5.

The longtime readers among you may recall that I don’t usually list table numbers with regards to MoCCA, since the venue is essentially one large room, but there are two others in particular I want to share, and one thing in general.

The first particular is Magnolia Porter, who is sharing table space with Tom Siddell at G5, and not at table A8 (as she is listed on the MoCCA exhibitor’s page). The second is Evan Dahm, who is at table C3, but who by rights should be at table B9, no? Let’s see if we can make that happen next year.

The general thing is the layout of the floor. In the years that the Society of Illustrators has been running the show, MoCCA Fest has been dong a bang-up job. The taller backdrops last year made for a smart-looking show floor, and this year they’re making another big change: the aisles are turned 90° to their previous orientation. In past years, entering from the main staircase on Lexington, a MoCCAgoer would duck around the showrunner table and then head up the center aisle of tables

Now, they’ll be heading into a center travel aisle, with exhibitor aisles branching off to the left and right. I can’t help but suspect that this may distribute showgoers throughout the hall more uniformly upon entrance. I’ll be sure to watch the traffic patterns.

There are so many things that made people anxious with waiting, I barely know where to start.

• For years — years! — we have been without a new Octopus Pie collection. My copy of Listen at Home with Octopus Pie has been thumbed through many times, There Are No Stars in Brooklyn may fall apart if I flip through any longer, and my copies of the self-published first three books must now be handled with museum gloves to not disturb the treasures within¹. And now! New book!
  

  The long-awaited Octopus Pie: Dead Forever is the first new book of OP material since 2011!

  The pre-order period goes until April 15th. If you order during this time, you will be helping to fund the actual printing of the book! Pretty neat.
  Octopus Pie: Dead Forever includes the following chapters from the webcomic:

  … where follows a list of thirteen storylines, from Moving On to Simple Breakfast, including the heart-rending Brownout Biscuit and Octopie Wall Street, which continue to resonate down to the most recent comics. This book could only be better if it included Couch Sitter, the source of Meredith Gran’s most inspired throwaway gag — a cafe with service by handpuppets — but since that was already included in Listen at Home I can’t really complain².

  Dead Forever is now pre-orderable for US$17 signed or US$24 for signed and sketched; shipping is expected in about a month, but Gran will likely have a modest supply to premiere the book at TCAF.

• For months — months! — we have been without a new datapoint in the greatest cultural debate of our times; namely, What is more popular, porn or not-porn? So far, there are two data points, as Smut Peddler 2012 raised US$83,100 in its Kickstarter, where The Sleep of Reason managed US$46,925, making porn 2.17 times as popular as not-porn.

  However! As a data-wrangler of some long practice, I recognize that a population size of two means that our statistical conclusions have a margin of error that is enormous. We need to add more porn and not-porn data before we can have any real confidence in our conclusions. Fortunately, we’re about to get some.

  Behold: Smut Peddler 2014 is now Kickstarting, features the same high totals benefit the creators model as SP2012 and TSOR, and will add to our understanding of this critical question. As per our previous conversations, anthology wrangler par excellence Spike plans to alternate porn and not-porn collections, which means in just another five decades or so, we should know definitively what’s more popular³. Anyhoo, some three hours in SP2014 is 65% funded, which bodes well for the contributors gettin’ a nice bonus check in a couple of months.

• For hours — hours! — earlier today until just a little while ago, Dinosaur Comics had hosting problems and the venerable qwantz.com was down. Society held its breath and somehow came though the dark times, no doubt relieved that a giant among webcomics (by a giant among men) was back in its proper place. Moreso, no doubt, because said giant, Ryan North, had big news to share:
  

  Hey did you see Marvel announced yesterday that I’ll be writing a Young Avengers miniseries for them? I AM EXCITED.

  The only way I see this turning out badly is if North’s now-established comic-book writing skills become so sought-after that he works himself too hard and spirals into a hole of overwork, cocaine brawls, and an untimely death. Otherwise, all good.

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¹ Namely, the hand-applied rendering of sparklebutt.

² Yes I can, every OP collection should include Couch Sitter and holy glob did that story actually start in January 2010 where the crap does time go. I’m old.

³ It’s porn. We all know it’s porn.

Little by little; we climb a little higher, we make things a little better, we learn a little more, we progress by increments.

• So like I promised, the final word on how STRIPPED did in its debut — throughout the day, it crept steadily higher, finally hitting the #1 documentary slot around 11:00pm EDT, which also meant a #27 overall placement. It continued to rise for some time, cracking the Top 25 overall a little after midnight. As of this writing (a little before 10:30am EDT on 2 April), STRIPPED retains the #1 documentary slot on iTunes, and #24 overall, sitting above the likes of a major animation franchise, the Coen brothers, Woody Allen, and some of the greatest musicians in history.

  What’s keeping STRIPPED from getting higher? Oh, just little obscure films like Thor 2, Gravity, and Veronica Mars, that’s all. Not bad for two dudes with bear[d]s¹, no studio, a shoestring budget, a couple of Kickstarts, and a whole bunch of people that love putting words and pictures together.

• Speaking of long-running stories here at Fleen, Jeff Smith’s Tüki Save the Humans is back in the news. From the announcement that Smith would be jumping into webcomics, to the launch last year, to the news that Tüki had garnered an NCS award nomination², it’s been fun to watch develop and mostly fun to read.

  I say mostly because of one thing that I was not alone in noticing — the website navigation for Tüki was not great. Rather than clicking from day-to-day, there were placeholder images that you clicked on to get actual pages, then you had to navigate back to the placeholder before moving to the next day. It was awkward at best.

  And I imagine nobody realized that more than Smith and the rest of the Cartoon Books crew, as they spent time since Tüki’s launch actively soliciting feedback and design expertise, and they’ve relaunched the site with ease of reading in mind. It’s better than Smiley Bone’s description — Now, instead of looking like it’s from 1996, it looks like it’s from 2006! — and it’s just in time to archive-binge before the scheduled return of Chapter Two later this month.

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¹ Follow the link and check out the hovertext.

² Although I will say that it’s perhaps early in Tüki’s run for this — with only 24 pages released so far, and not all of those in 2013, and the story just starting, I would have preferred to see that recognition come after another chapter or two. Not that I think that Smith will deliver anything less than a stellar story, there’s more than ample evidence to believe that he will; it’s just that his co-nominees have been telling much larger stories and produced much more work in 2013.

Guys, this is the last time I’m going to mention STRIPPED for the immediate future, except to update you as to how they’re doing in their goal to become #1 on iTunes today. As of this writing, they’re sitting at #5 in Documentaries and #59 overall; considering some of the biggest and most acclaimed films of last year are newly released and sitting in the #1 and 2 slots overall, it’s going to be some tough sledding. I’m confident, however, that they can surpass that Belieber “documentary” with your help..

Honestly, it’s a masterpiece, it’s out on iTunes today, it’s out lots of places tomorrow, and if you love comics you owe it to yourself to watch it. I’ve watched it through multiple times now, I keep noticing new things and I know there’s more there still (for example, the credits acknowledge the kind permission received to include an Oglaf [NWFNearlyEveryW¹] strip, and I haven’t spotted it yet. I wonder which one such goodly-hearted young men as Freddave could possibly have used.

In other news, happy strippiversaries this week to Christopher B Wright and K Brooke Otter Spangler who this week are celebrating, respectively, 18 and 8 years² in the webcomics mines³. After you’re done with STRIPPED, spend some time with their archives.

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¹ If you’re at work and it’s okay for you to click that link to Oglaf, I want to know if you’re hiring.

² Brooke, please have permalinkable blogpostings some day. For those wondering, the two links in that image go here.

³ Coincidentally, both of them are also making serious inroads in the world of e-books.

Now this may be a new one — I’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns to print comics that have already been released to the web, and I’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns to support the production of new webcomics. I can’t recall seeing the two wrapped up together in a combo platter of past and future comics before, and as nature abhors a vacuum, so Rob Balder’s Erfworld abhors the opportunity to try something new. Thus, the newest Erfstarter (the fourth by my count) is to both produce a print version of Book 2 and determine how fancy Book 3 will be. The rough breakdown will be:

• 100% funding (already achieved) — Book 2 (comprising nearly 250 pages, and more than four years of updates) and assorted tchotchkes made, Book 3 released as prose only
• 138% funding — Book 3 will be prose with inset panel illustrations
• 198% funding — Book 3 will be alternating comics and prose/inset illustrations, as were Books 1 and 2

… with the differences in funding correlating directly to the costs of paying artist David Hahn and his almost frighteningly-skilled Periscope Studiomates.

Balder’s previous overfundings on a percentage basis were 354%, 476%, and 537%, which would seem to make his top stretch goal pretty easily reachable; however, Balder’s previous dollar goals were well below the US$49,000 he’s seeking here (as of this writing, he’s a little north of US$54,000). In fact, his previous top funding target in dollar figures only half what he’s seeking now (US$24,000). Then again, that project raised nearly US$85K, which is a bit less than the US$97K that reaches the top stretch now, and he’s got another two years of fandom and goodwill built up in the meantime.

Applying the ol’ Triple-F calculation¹ give a prediction of Balder ending up somewhere between 204% and 408%, and since even the extreme low end of the predicted range clears the threshold for the top stretch, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet (with 25 days left to go) that Balder will be writing fewer text pages and more comics scripts. In any event, this oddly hybrid, looking-forward and looking-back campaign is something I expect we’ll see more of in the future, so I’m sure I won’t be the only one watching to see how it turns out.

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¹ The Fleen Funding Factor, or Formula, or some combination of three f-words: take the trend value of the project at the 24-30 hour mark from Kicktraq and divide by both three and six; the final total will most likely be somewhere in the middle of that range. In this case, the trend at that point was sitting as close to US$600K as makes no difference.

If you should wander by the Periscope Studio booth at Emerald City Comic Con (that would be number #1214), do be a dear and find Dylan Meconis and high-five the everliving crap out of her for me, will you? Because her longform webcomic, Family Man, just got nominated for a frickin’ NCS division award, alongside some luminaries as Jenn Manley Lee’s Dicebox, Eddie Pittman’s Red’s Planet, and Jeff Smith (who just happens to be one of the all time giants of comics) for Tüki Save The Humans. Dag, yo.

Over in the short form category, you can find Jim Horwitz’s Watson, Ryan Pagelow’s Buni (my favorite of the three), and the New Yorker online comics of Mike Twohy. The last one strikes me as a little weird (or perhaps redundant), as Twohy is also nominated in the category for magazine gag cartoons, which raises the possibility that the same cartoons seen in the magazine and online could be separately recognized in two divisions. Since the divisions handle nominations separately, the NCS may need to draft policy in the future to deal with such situations.

[Edit to add: NCS President Tom Richmond has clarified the matter in the comments– Mike Twhohy’s nominations are for works that appear in different media and they do not overlap. We at Fleen apologize for the confusion on my part, and thank to Richmond for the clarification.]

And to round out a good day for webcomics, Emily Carroll’s Out of Skin racked up yet another recognition, as it has been nominated in the Doug Wright Awards for the Pigskin Peters trophy.

The Doug Wright Awards will be given out in conjunction with TCAF on 10 May, and the NCS awards at the Reubens weekend in San Diego on 24 May (with special guest “Weird’ Al Yankovic).