Well! That was fun! Let’s mention all the things that I wanted to talk about yesterday, yes?

• Because of the interruption, I’m behind on pointing out Spike’s amazing near-24 hour comic on making it in comics (think of it as a very narrowly-scoped version of Poorcraft, only instead of being about life in general, it’s about being a comics artist in particular) and the Kickstarter for Natasha Allegri’s Bee and Puppycat to be made into a series. Both of these things are awesome, and I have practically nothing to add to what was already said (except, perhaps, to note that the US$10,000 limited reward for the Bee & Puppycat Kickstarter was snagged up sometime in the first hour and forty-five minutes).
• Heck I’m even behind on congratulating Gene Luen Yang for Boxers & Saints moving up from the Long List to finalist at the National Book Awards in the category of Young People’s Literature. I noted after the long list announcement that I’d been unable to find any other graphic novels that have been nominated in the history of the NBAs; with this latest (and supremely well-deserved) nod, Yang is certainly the first to repeat for graphic novel recognition. Heck, even getting nominated more than once is rare — Kathi Appelt is nominated this year alongside Yang and was also in 2008, and Rita Williams-Garcia was nominated back-to-back in 2009 and 2010. That’s some pretty rarified company that Yang finds himself in.

Now that I’m caught up, let me get ahead of the curve on two other items I found interesting:

• Lauren Zukauskas does the great Rachael & Penny and opened up orders for a very limited run of her first print collection, which is now unfortunately sold out. However! She is taking pre-orders on a new print run so you can still get in on that. R&P is terrific stuff, so give this one a good look, ‘kay?
• And the always-valuable Jim Zub took the time to share numbers once again (see earlier data here) on how Skullkickers (a critically-lauded, modest-selling indy comic) has finally earned out and become net profitable. It took 23 issues and more than two years, and it’s a very small slice of profit, but it’s profit. If you’re trying to make money on your own in comics, read everything Zub has to say about Skullkickers — it’s the perfect complement to Spike’s comics-lifestyle travelogue.
• Lastly, some good news in a world that seems bound and determined to exploit the crap out of independent creators; from Ryan Estrada (who else?):
  

  If you need a happy ending: I’ll be sending well paying job offers out soon to some artists I found by editing @forexposure_txt

  Suck on that, wannabe exploiters; creators worth working with get paid, with money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh my god. It was my fault? — North.

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

What they’re working on or have coming up:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Strickland going to be in it? — Hastings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last ten years were a gift.

I’ll be back in a week or so. Be good to each other until then.

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

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

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

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

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

_______________
¹ My evil twin.

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

³ It’s a coincidence, grow up.

That is to say, here are various things happening near to the world of indy- and webcomics, and you should check them out.

• Jim Zub was kind enough to send me an advance review PDF of his forthcoming Samurai Jack #1 and it is good. How good? Understand that I’m not precious about comics — I don’t do the collecting-for-future-value thing; if it’s not something I want to read again, I don’t keep it. Even though I’ve read it, I’m going to buy a copy of SJ#1 when it drops in three weeks because it’s damn good and people that do good work deserve to be paid for it.
• One of the way you can support people that do good work is to pay them, with money. One of the ways that a lots of comics artists get you to pay them with money is via convention sketching and commissions; you can imagine that it would be an unusual thing for an artist to decide to give up a channel for making money (and thus allowing them to keep their career as an artist), but sometimes it’s for good reasons:
  

  Something I should say in advance of Thoughtbubble next month – I’m no longer doing commissions/sketches of characters that aren’t my own.

  It’s been a long deliberation about this but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s not really something I enjoy doing.

  And if I’m not enjoying it, I feel like I just rush through it and produce a mediocre piece, which isn’t good for you, or me.

  So, my apologies for anyone who was looking for Batman/Catwoman/etc sketches. I’ll still of course sign stuff.

  I’m aiming to have some nice prints, and hopefully a new sketchbook, and copies of Sin Titulo¹ which I will draw in.

  I’m also going to try and bring some new pieces of my own, drawn and framed, which will be for sale, so you will be able to buy an original. [links, empahsis mine]

  Stewart’s coming at this from exactly the right perspective — trying to make the commission game have value for the fan, while also not being something that puts work into the public view that isn’t his best. It’s laudable, and fans of artists only for their mass-market work will hopefully open up to the idea that there may other things that those favorite artists draw that are just as (more, even) compelling. I’m reminded here of an early NYCC where I watched (Stewart’s onetime studiomate) Karl Kerschl entertain a stream of Flash fans that couldn’t be bothered to take two seconds to look at The Abominable Charles Christopher.

• Speaking of NYCC, let me update our NYCC Webcomics-type Exhibitor List to include Scott C, who will be in the Artists Alley at table N2. I missed him in my trawl of the exhibitor list due to his being identified as Scott Campbell, a name I sometimes forget is his. In any event, Mr C is one of the friendliest guys in all of the comicky arts and you should go see him and buy a print, painting, book, or other tangible expression of his art².
• A’course, it is not just we, the readers of comics, that creators depend on — they must deal with publishers, editors, freelancing, and work-for-hire in varying degrees. It is with that topic in mind that longtime comics creator Kurt Busiek Mark Waid [Editor’s note: How the hell did I mistake those two gentlemen?] wrote to young comics freelancers about dealing with work-for-hire and it’s a must-read for all those that aspire to work in corporate comics:
  

  [I]f you never listen to another word I say, and I talk a lot, please know this: the only one watching out for your future is you.

  Be professional. Be a problem-solver. Be willing to compromise in the face of a solid argument. Be willing to lose sometimes because you’ll learn more that way than you will by always winning. Ultimately, if a client is paying you for your services, he or she has every right to set the specifications, just as you have a right to your integrity. But when people jealous of how you make a living try to rag you with that old truism that every company employee has to eat shit now and then, remind them that you are not an employee. You’re a contractor. You do not receive health benefits, sick days, pensions, vacation time, or any of the other considerations traditional employees receive. Your clients have zero ethical or moral ground to lie to you, to denigrate you, to cheat you, to demand more from you than they’re paying for, to unapologetically walk back on promises or treat you maliciously, or to exploit your need to put food on the table. The good ones won’t. Never trust the bad ones.

  The quality of your work is all that matters. That’s what buys you longevity. [emphasis original]

  There’s much more at the link, and it’s all worth reading.

• Let’s end on an out-of-this-world note. Sure, you can plunk US$39.95 down with a bogus registry to get a pretty certificate that a star was named after you, but the real astronomical brass ring is having the governing body of astronomical names recognize you. Randal Munroe of xkcd now has an actual asteroid named for him, and he does what any good geek would do with that information:
  

  The first thing I did was try to figure out whether 4942 Munroe was big enough to pose a threat to Earth. I was excited to learn that, based on its albedo (brightness), it’s probably about 6-10 kilometers in diameter. That’s comparable in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs—definitely big enough to cause a mass extinction!

  4942 Munroe is described here, and it can be found here. And may I say that although the vast majority of NASA is shut down due to a factional hissyfit in the House of Representatives, these two websites are still up and running and therefore must be essential, QED.

________________
¹ Sin Titulo is fabulous and yes you can read it for free on the web, but remember what I just said about rewarding good work? Go do that.

² Once again, all about rewarding good work.

Day’s almost done, so let’s get this done.

• 10! Years, that is. I missed it earlier, but this past Sunday marked ten years of Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew. Despite various heatlh-related hiatuses, Burlew has managed an average of 92 (sometimes ridiculously complex) strips a year for a decade, or one every four days, so if you’re one of those that complain about not getting your free entertainment more regularly, please be quiet.
• 2500! Strips, that is. Ryan North, despite writing all the awesome comic books, revivifying an entire book genre, training a small mammal, inspiring two bestselling anthologies, and writing a critique of a movie novelization longer than the novelization itself has found the time to create 2500 completely sweet episodes of T-Rex. Also he is very tall.
• Return! Just in time for Halloween, that is. Dave Roman is more blur than human; he is in constant motion as he promotes comics to young readers, and amazing characters fall out of his brain and onto the page with astonishing regularity: Jax Epoch, Astronaut Academy, Teen Boat¹ … and back today for more installments, Agnes Quill. There couldn’t be a better time for the plucky, smart teen detective and the haunted city she calls home, what with it being October and all.

________________
¹ Be careful about searching for the term “teen boat”, as the porn industry makes the term “teen” fairly toxic to search for, especially if you’re at work.

Today’s about value for your discretionary spending dollar.

• The webcomicsosphere chatter fairly exploded over the weekend with praise for a very short comic (18 pages, including covers, afterword, and 14 nearly-wordless pages) by longtime creator Dean Trippe. Something Terrible is about something terrible that happened to Trippe, how it affected him, and (not to put too fine a point on it) how he was saved by his son and Batman.

  It’s a devastatingly honest work, a very public piece that says This happened to me, it became a part of me, but it’s not who I am. For 99 cents, you can download Something Terrible from Sellfy, and when you’re done reading it, you’re going to be in the mood to support Trippe’s comic-making, so maybe donate a bit more via his own webcomic’s page — or better yet, grab a print of his previously-released print, You’ll Be Safe Here.

• Now while I wouldn’t go back and not read Something Terrible, I have a feeling that (like me) you might be in the mood for a shift of tone. How about we trade adult-and-serious for adult-and-hilarious? Fleen fave K Brooke “Otter” Spangler has many fine wares in her Internet Shoppery but we’re on a budget so we’re heading to Amazon instead for her PDF-only pulp novel, The Russians Came Knocking, starring her technologically-augmented Federal agent slash manwhore, Josh Glassman. Obligatory disclaimer, Otter’s a good friend of mine, and she just might have put in the bit about the squirrels after my run-ins with the brush-tailed little bastards, and for that I will love her forever. That’s another 99 cents, so we’re just under two bucks in our buying trip.
• Having made it throgh TRCK¹, your laugh muscles may be warmed up enough for a pro-level workout, and the sexiest man in webcomics² is going to provide it. Brad Guigar has recorded his infamous laugh as a ringtone for your phone. Three ringtones, in fact, including the laugh courtesy of the infamous episode #76 of Webcomics Weekly when a troublemaking Skype locked into a loop of Guigar’s laugh-chuckle³ and nearly killed Kris Straub and Scott Kurtz. It’s US$2.99 for the three ringtones, meaning that we’re at a grand total of US$4.97 and you’ve got three shiny pennies to buy candy with.

  Or, alternately, you could go make your own money via memefication, with bonus points for ensuring that the webcomic creator gets none of it.

________________
¹ And one must remember that around Josh, the verb knocking takes on a particular meaning, as in knocking boots or knocking shop.

² I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mrs Guigar is a lucky, lucky woman.

³ The madness starts around 7:45.

Before I have to clear out of here to make a Friday-afternoon flight.

• Jim Zub’s Makeshift Miracle resumes from hiatus today, until October at least. If you haven’t been reading, get started on that.
• Matthew Inman gets some props from Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of RadioLab in an interview over at The AV Club. Said props are specifically on the topic of murdershrimps, but the interview itself is a nice meditation on the nature of creativity and creative partnerships.
• Hiveworks continues its rapid expansion with the addition of Hurricane Erika’s Oh Joy, Sex Toy. A long time ago I wrote about a theoretical webcomics support-services provider that I termed Aduz; today in addition to Hiveworks and its hosting/advertising gigs, you have TopatoCo’s curated merch-handling, Make That Thing’s Kickstarter-wrangling, Blind Ferret staking out a spot between HW and The Big T, Breadpig expanding from mostly publishing-related ventures into Kickstarter sherpa services, and the ever-present George. Aduz is here, service providers keep growing to fill the need, and here’s hoping they manage their growth smartly so as not to overextend beyond capacity¹. Exciting times.

_______________
¹ TopatoCo are the masters at this; I’d estimate they could be at least 30% larger than they are right now, but only by doing a crappier, less-fun-for-them job, which is something they are not willing to do. If every company took that as a model, the economy would be a lot stronger and going to a job that required pants wouldn’t suck so much.

So the floor plan for NYCC 2013 is out and do you see what I see? Or rather, what I don’t see? The hazardous-to-life-and-sanity construction zone running east-west through the Javits Center is gone, praise be to whatever you find praiseworthy¹. That means that we can tell you who is webcomics-like that’s gonna be there, and where you can find ’em. As in past years, the people that you’re going to want to see are in several clusters, including Artists Alley, and aisles 900, 1300, 1600, and 2200. Also, there’s a couple of gonzo you’ve got to be kidding booth choices way the heck over in the 300-400 zone that I’m including for giggles. Let’s check ’em out.

Artists Alley
As was the case last year, Artists Alley is in the North Pavilion of the Javits, accessible via a roughly two block long passageway from the north end of the main convention center. It is my most sincere wish that the showrunners have learned how to funnel people into and out of the convention center without making it impossible to navigate to the North Pavilion². Unfortunately, the AA map requires a zoom of 650%+ to get to the point of legible table numbers, so I won’t be marking those up the diagram. Nevertheless you may here find Ramón Pérez (K10), Jim Zub & Edwin Huang (H6), Katie Cook (C10), and Strip Search hippie love commune survivors Katie Rice, Maki Naro, and Mackenzie Schubert (V5, V6, V7). Also, plentiful ATMs and natural light, yay.

Main Floor
Since we were just in the North Pavilion, let’s start from the north, high-numbered end of the main show floor (on the right side of the image) and progress southward.

The 2200 Aisle is our first cluster of interest, where we’ll find comic strip publisher Andrews McMeel (booth 2219), occasional show home of Matthew Inman. A little deeper into the hall and you’ll get :01 Books (booth 2237), Blind Ferret (booth 2246), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 2247). For those playing at home, that’s two high-traffic booths directly across the from each other; fortunately, they’re also on a main travel aisle.

Continuing south, there’s a quick jog to the front of the hall for ShiftyLook (booth 1620), which is probably your best show of catching up with random webcomickers who aren’t at their own booths or tables. Three aisles over, you can find Boom! Studios (another possible place to find random webcomickers, at booth 1344), and 1977 The Comic creator Byron Wilkins (booth 1367).

A few more aisles along, you’ll get The First Law Of Mad Science (booth 972) close by the deserving-of-your-support Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (booth 965). A bit thin on webcomickers this year, I’ll grant, offset somewhat by the largest contingent of webcomickers as invited guests of the show that I can recall.

Oh, and for anybody looking to get away from comics entirely, keep heading south until you hit the 300-400 zone and there you will find both Brooklyn Bewery (booth 427), which I sorta get as there is a panel on comics and beer on Friday, and the Embassy of Spain Trade Commission (booth 341), which I don’t get at all. But I am going to go and ask why the Spanish love comics.

_______________
¹ I’m chuckin’ around praise today like it’s going out of style.

² Or perhaps I should say dangerous, to the point that I never made it there last year, despite hearing that it was very nice.