As much as I said that I wanted every Artist on Strip Search season one, after my beloved Hurricane Erika bowed out I was really pulling for Maki Naro. Maybe it was his whole-hearted adoption of the pineapple motif, maybe it was his comic’s embrace of science, maybe it was the magnificent facial hair¹. His pitch in the finale for Sufficiently Remarkable, a nature show about humans in their natural habitat, just resonated with me, as did the knowledge that we have the same taste in dive bars.

As was entirely inevitable, Naro has launched the Kickstart to get Sufficiently Remarkable off the ground² and as was entirely inevitable cleared his goal in about 12 hours and is (as of this writing) about 160% of goal approaching the 24 hour mark. Applying the Fleen Fudge Factor³ to the Kicktraq prediction puts Sufficiently Remarkable in the US$42 – 84K range, but that doesn’t account for the pull of the higher stretch goals:

How cruel will Naro’s followers be? Hopefully, either US$95,099 or more than US$100,000 worth of cruel.

• Names are being added to the Official SDCC Webcomickers List, but to summarize them here:
  • Ryan North will be at the TopatoCo booth, 1229 & 1328, as well as signing This Is How You Die at the Hachette booth, 1116, on Friday 19 July from 11:00am to 12 noon.
  • Zach Weinersmith will be sharing space with Unshelved at booth 2300 in the Independent Press area.
  • Andrew Hussie will be across the street at the off-site area set up by ShiftyLook.

  In fact, let’s expand on that ShiftyLook off-site piece a little, because they’re going to have a mountain of webcomickers at the outdoor deck of the Gaslamp Hilton, including (in no particular order):

  Andrew Hussie
  Ryan North
  Christopher Hastings
  Scott Kurtz
  Kris Straub
  Zach Weinersmith

  There will also be the ShiftyLook freeplay arcade games, music at night, fun times for all, and some panels over in the convention center. Check out the ShiftyLook page for details (and the SDCC event schedule once it goes up).

• If you are going to SDCC and you skip the Sunday-night parties, or if you aren’t going to SDCC and are looking for something on TV on a Sunday night, FOX is giving Axe Cop a primetime preview:
  

  Tune in to the special primetime preview of ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF, featuring AXE COP (9:30-9:45 PM ET/PT) and HIGH SCHOOL USA! (9:45-10:00 PM ET/PT), on Sunday, July 21. In the “Night Mission: Stealing Friends Back” episode of AXE COP, badass crime fighter AXE COP heads out on a special night mission with the help of his partner, FLUTE COP (Ken Marino), and sidekicks GREY DIAMOND (guest voice Rob Heubel), ARMY CHIHUAHUA (guest voice Giancarlo Esposito) and LIBORG (guest voice Tyler, the Creator), when fellow superhero BAT WARTHOG MAN’s (guest voice Vincent Kartheiser) friends go missing. Then, in the “Bullies” episode of HIGH SCHOOL USA!, upbeat and super-positive teen MARSH MERRIWETHER (Kartheiser) learns a valuable lesson when his best friend is accused of bullying. Meanwhile, CASSANDRA (Mandy Moore) gets ready for the “It Gets Better After High School” high school dance.

  Weirdly, nowhere in the entire press release is there so much as a mention of Nick Offerman as the voice of Axe Cop. Bizarre.

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¹ Everybody’s talking about the “beardwall”, but come on — dude’s got a ‘stache worthy of respect.

² Not to mention financially buffer his shift from “day job plus comics” to “leave the day job and make a go of it in comics”.

³ Look at the Kicktraq prediction somewhere around the 24- to 36-hour mark and the final tally will be between one-sixth to one-third of that prediction. But counterexamples abound!

The great thing about the people I follow, and have been privileged to know, is just how nerdy we can all be. Case in point: Dante Shepherd (PhD, Chemical Engineering) wanted to make a point about how silly it is to treat humanities and hard sciences as sitting in opposition to each other, and did so by appealing to the memory of a well-loved¹ cartoon from his youth.

• I hope by now you are all appreciating the gift that Tom McHenry has provided for you and are well on your way to becoming horsemasters. Join us at the pinnacle of society!
• Ryan Estrada wondered a few days ago if anybody was collecting the many, many instances online of thinking that artists should work for free because if they aren’t poor they aren’t really artists, or some such crap. Finding no better repository he’s launched the @forexposure_txt twitterfeed, which is already displaying a handsome collection of The Stupid and reminds us of Stevens Law: People die of exposure. So far, this is my favorite:
  

  I”m [sic] a working letterer for Marvel comics and I still would never expect to get paid for writing and/or art.

  That noise you heard was Chris Eliopoulos firing up the chipper-shredder; whoever tweeted that foolishness will not leave so much as a stain.

• Big Art Sale! Meredith Gran is selling original Marceline and the Scream Queens pages for amazing prices, and Octopus Pie pages at what can only be described as criminally low price point. Go dive in.
• Last thoughts for today — I’m running out of wall space but I just had to. Menquilin, meet Hapytzu.

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¹ If excessively preachy.

Happy Canada Day; what with another national holiday in a few days, it’s pretty quiet which makes it a good to day to note some few items of interest. First, I have a brief story to share with you.

Once upon a time Jon and Phillip shared an apartment in Manhattan and a pair of barstools at the Peculier Pub.

That was the first sentence I wrote in a summary of all that had happened in the electronic pages of Goats (and good glob, that was more than seven years ago … the time, she does fly); the site is in the between-places now, but if you like you can find it in the Internet Archive. Jon being Jon Rosenberg, as responsible as anybody for my being in a position to inflict my opinions upon you lovely people, and Phillip being Phillip Karlsson who for most of the history of Fleen served as the more-or-less publisher by virtue of the services provided by Dumbrella Hosting [link likely to be dead soon].

As is its wont, time has brought changes and Phillip has closed up Dumbrella Hosting; along with this mostly-daily indulgence of me, Phillip provided services for a number of webcomics most well-known creators as well as a good chunk of the code that managed their comments and stores. This may be a good time for you to peruse those links, make sure you have the latest addresses¹, RSS feeds, and suchlike³.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank Phillip for all that he did for Fleen (which is to say, me) for most of seven years. He insulated me from the costs and efforts of keeping what is ultimately a hobby running, and with an uptime that would be the envy of any IT department; I can literally count on one hand the number of down hours the we at Fleen suffered over the better part of a decade.

Jon Rosenberg is very kindly offering me space on his server, and in this way the Ciiirrrrrcle of Life is completed and I return to where I started. If, during the transition phase and after, I prove to be less adept about making everything work than was customary in the past, offer your thanks to the powerful looking man with a chair meant for malefactors, and let me know what’s broken.

• From Christopher Baldwin: the end of Spacetrawler is rapidly approaching, and he’s got a couple of questions for his readers regarding what comes next:
  

  As I wrap up Spacetrawler, and am developing the strip which will replace it, I am planning to stay in the Sci-Fi genre. I have received a lot of praise for doing sci-fi in both a funny and respectably-true-to-genre way.

  What I want to know from you all is: what I can do to do it even better? If there is anything you’d like to see me weave in more in the new project let me know. Also, if you know of any bloggers/podcasts/critics/etc who focus on sci-fi, I would like to write some of these folk to do regular sci-fi critique and ask them the same thing, so let me know who you look to for that kind of info.

  If the new comic is even half as good as Spacetrawler (and I have no doubt it will be much better than that), it’ll be worth your time from Day One. Watch this space for more information.

• Last minute notice! KC Green has been summering in the ancestral land of his people and will be having a public event before returning to the (given how this summer’s going, only slightly) less tornado-prone climes of Western Massachusetts. Specifically:
  

  This Wednesday July 3rd, I am doing a last minute signing at Atomik Pop in OKC at 3pm til 6pm for the Regular Show comic books! I will only have RS issues 1 and 2 on my person, nothing else. Very last minute stuff, but you can still come by and say hi!

  Tell KC that we said hi.

• Latest updates have been made to the webcomics exhibitor’s list for SDCC 2013. Enjoy.

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¹ For example, Brad Guigar² is now preferring www.evil-inc.com to www.evil-comic.com

² He’s dreamy.

³ We at Fleen are concentrating first on ensuring the blog is good, then we’ll worry about feeds, re-hosting email, and such. Please be patient with us.

Bow howdy, that is one big building [PDF]; fortunately, like previous years, there’s a pretty decent clustering of webcomics and their natural allies, so read on down into the sections below to figure out where the heck people are gonna be. Please note that all the information given is what I could confirm at press time, and as more information becomes available I will update or correct this page.

Low Numbers
Let’s start over to the right side of the map, which is vaguely northish if you’re feeling all geospatial. It looks like this:

The Webcomics, Small Press, and Independent Press Pavilions are all reasonably accessible from the “B” lobby. Let’s break ’em down.

Webcomics Central
Centered roughly on booth #1332, you’ll find a majority of the webcomickers who will be at the show within about a 1.5 aisle radius; some are slightly outside the orange area, but unless there’s another Homestuck lineup stretching back to the 700 aisle¹ it shouldn’t be too difficult to get around.

Notes:

• Blank Label will be David Willis and others to be confirmed.
• Randy Milholland and Joel Watson will be with Blind Ferret.
• Dumbrella will include Andy Bell, Meredith Gran, Jon Rosenberg, Rich Stevens, Chris Yates, and me.
• Halfpixel will be a solo Dave Kellett.
• Monster Milk will include Evan Dahm, Tyler Hutchinson, and Zach Marcus, with the odd appearance by Becky & Frank.
• Penny Arcade will be in Australia for PAXAus and are letting other use their booth; I have confirmed that their booth plans were set months ago and although it would be awesome, there will not be a bunch of Strip Search Artists there, darnit.
• Kris Straub will be at the PvP booth.
• TopatoCo boothers will include Brandon Bird, Aaron Diaz², Christopher Hastings, Tyson Hesse, Sam Logan, David Malki ! and Ryan North.

Small Press
Right by the Webcomics section is Small Press. Here you should find:

From the Small Press section, you’re close by:

Notes:

• Gallery Nucleus/Bolt City will feature Becky & Frank, Kazu Kibuishi, Scott C, Olly Moss, and Mike Mitchell.

Their booth assignment has switched to #2743, location described two paragraphs below

Now head back toward the “B” Lobby into the Independent Press area and you’ll find Unshelved in Booth 2300 with special guest Zach Weinersmith. Head towards entrance B2 in particular and you’ll be right next to Axe Cop at Booth 1603.

For the other places of note, we’ll have to go back to that larger map of the northern half of the exhibit hall. Wedged in between the Marvel and Image megabooths you’ll find Keenspot in Booth 2635, and between Image and the back of the hall you’ll find BOOM! Gallery Nucleus/Bolt City See below at Booth 2743, where I imagine some of the many contributors to the Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors, and Regular Show will probably make an appearance or two. Confirmed appearing at the BOOM! booth are Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb.

Two last places to mention, and you’ve got a hike in front of you. Head down to the southern half of the hall:

Waaay down there, past all the art materials and vinyl toys and Copic markers, you’ll find Udon Entertainment (home of such worthies as Christopher Butcher and Jim Zub at Booth 4529 & 4628); it’s roughtly midway between 20th Century Fox and Yes Anime, on the main travel aisle. And if you go all the way down to the vicinity of Artists Alley, The Hero Initiative is in Booth 5003, near Big Wow! Art.

Offsite
Finally, head out the doors walk across the rail tracks to the Gaslamp Hilton terrace and see Andrew Hussie at the ShiftyLook Arcade for one autograph session per day.

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¹ I think that Con management learned their lesson last year when TopatoCo Supremo Jeffrey Rowland led a parade of Homestucks up to the autograph area to clear the enormous line that had built up on the floor. It was glorious to watch.

² If he ever combines his dinosaur scholarship and his Tolkien scholarship, I may die of pure nerdjoy.

Let’s start with a logistical note: Fleen will be shifting hosting in the next couple of days; apologies in advance if anything gets broken. If you can’t get enough of me while DNS propagates and so forth, you can always follow my twitterfeed.

• The big news today is that the SDCC 2013 exhibitor list/floor map went up, and I’m busy figuring out where everybody’s going to be — I should have a list and maps for your pleasure tomorrow. If you’re going to be exhibiting and want to make sure I know about you, the contact link is over there to the right.
• In the meantime, please take a moment and follow this link to a posting by international bon vivant Ryan Estrada, where he describes seeing a Korean horror movie that concerns a woman that steals content from webcomics creators and posts without attribution to a Tumblr-like site, prompting the ghost of a dead creator to lash out with death and destruction. It basically sounds like the best thing ever, and for webcomickers it could possibly serve as a checklist of methods by which to haunt the crap out of non-attributors.

The last 24 hours have been as much of a stress test of Twitter as ever I can remember, what with big items in the news provoking a lot of social media connections. Speaking as a guy with a day job, it’s tough to keep up with the backlog at times, although honestly, it’s mostly an embarrassment of riches.

My criteria for following people on Twitter (I don’t use other social networks) is twofold: smart and interesting gets you added, but the problem is that smart and interesting people tend to follow each other, which tends to lead to smart and interesting traffic that is exponentially greater than if all of my friends were strangers to each other. I wonder sometimes if MC Frontalot didn’t have the right idea¹ after all.

All of which is to say, I feel guilty that I don’t have time to keep up with all the people I want to; I held off for the longest time adding even three of the Strip Search Artists to my twitterfeed, on account of I just can’t manage the time to follow all twelve. The “hippie love commune” that developed during filming that gave Messers Krahulik and Holkins such difficulty means that these kids² communicate with a fervor and regularity and volume that I cannot keep up with. I had figured it might have tapered off a bit, seeing as how they all just met six months ago and those exciting new friend! tendencies fade after a while.

Nope, they still can’t get enough of each other, even though they all seem to be migrating to Seattle; soon they’ll all live within 10 km of each, meet daily at a coffeeshop, and still tweet to each other rather than call across the room.

All of which is even more to say, I love that photo of the Artists imitating their cardboard cut-out self-portrait stand-ups. Monica and Abby are adorable, Amy and Tavis are fierce, Katie’s pose cracks me the hell up, and Maki the pagan athiest science-guy is one haircut away from Jesus in da Vinci’s Last Supper. Damn them all, it’s been half a year, I should be able to stop talking about them.

Except they keep doing things. Case in point: Ms T Falcone let me know this morning about plans she’s got for the immediate future. Now that she’s safely ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, a new locale demands new projects. Cardigan Weather, her diary comic, will be ending to make room for a new comic to tell the things she wants to tell:

I don’t want to give away too much, but I can say this. Have you ever felt like logging on is like coming home?

Watch this space for further information regarding Untitled Amy T Falcone Project, her inevitably runaway-successful Kickstarter, and the rest of a career that is going to kick so many asses. Also watch this space for what will probably be regular announcements for everybody else involved in Strip Search; I suspect the answer to When can I stop writing about these darn kids? is Never.

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¹ For a considerable period of time, the esteemed Mr Alot had a policy of only following 50 people on Twitter to keep the information to a manageable level; to follow somebody new, somebody old had to go. It appears he’s relaxed his limit somewhat these days, but he’s still following considerably fewer than the 250 that I allow myself, and I have no idea how some of my friends follow 700, 800, 1000 or more people.

² I’m old, I can call ’em kids. Heck, Hurricane Erika just turned 30 yesterday, meaning that I was taking finals in high school while she was objecting to the new, bright, loud, cold world she found herself ejected into. Kids.

While I managed to finish Boxers and Saints last night, there’s no way I’m ready to write anything about them yet — they’re too big. China is too big¹ and these books contain within them the smallest fraction of The Middle Kingdom’s history, and that fraction is enormous and must be thought on carefully. However, I realized something this morning that I do want to share, which is virtually everything I know about Chinese history, I know because of comics.

Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe has more than 100 pages of history from before the common era, and I have a collection of three comics treatments of Chinese military classics (100 Strategies of War; Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong; Six Strategies For War, all illustrated by Wang Xuanming). They’ve taught me about the Warring States, Lu Pu-Wei, Liu Bang, Cao Cao, Liu Bao, the Spring and Autumn Period, the Battle of Red Bluff, and a dozen other centuries worth of history. It’s still just the surface, but it’s more than I was ever taught in school².

• Ever wonder what 14,000 books looks like? Like this. Ever wonder what kind of man could sign all those books and not die? The Toronto Man-Mountain, also known as Ryan North, Cyborg King of Awesome Things. We at Fleen wish Ryan North good fortune and hope that those books — he is their creator, they owe him their lives — treat him kindly and don’t cause his hand to fall off.
• At MoCCA Fest last year, I was talking with Ananth Panagariya³ was talking about projects not involving his long partnership with Yuko Ota, which conversation was rather roundabout and coy because he couldn’t talk about everything yet. He gets to talk about it now, it being BUZZ, a fully-contained story with Tessa Stone which was previously described as a regularly-updating serial at Oni’s website.

  The plan had been for serials to launch in January and OniPress.com to be a daily-updating content hub, but I didn’t see any of that go live. Serious question here — did I just miss Oni’s version of the :01 Books preview books as webcomics sub-site, To Be Continued? Because I have no recollection of that happening. In any event, BUZZ will now be going to print in November, the story of one-on-one spelling bees as street-level contact sport. Looks sweet.

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¹ Back in college, my political science professor asked us what we wanted to write our first paper on and one guy in class said, China!. Thad (that was his name, Dr Thad “Call me Thad” Smith) looked at him and said, You’ve got eight pages, you might want to narrow that down a little.

² This would probably annoy Gonick to no end, who groused in the introduction to Volume 9 of CHOTU — the first concerning China — that San Fransisco, his hometown, with its huge Chinese population that were instrumental in building the city, had not one street with a Chinese name. This may have changed since it was published in 1994, but the sentiment is the same — we have an enormous collective blind spot in our culture, one big enough to hide a fifth of the people on the planet and everything they’ve ever done.

Another thing not taught to me in school: romanization methods for Chinese names; I’ve taken the names as they’re presented in the comics, which may or may not match the most popular methods today. I imagine you’ll make do somehow.

³ AKA Mr Eyeless, Aaah~~I hope Anath-sempai likes me!.

Gina Gagliano and Colleen AF Venable may be my two favorite people right now. Today’s mail brought pre-release copies of both Boxers and Saints by Gene Leun Yang, 500-odd pages of comic goodness from one of the finest creators of our times, with much of the logistics of :01 Books bringing these volumes to print (and to my hands) landing squarely on Gagliano’s skilled shoulders.

The cover design is by Venable, and as much as I’ve praised her work previously¹, she’s blown away all previous efforts with these handsome, matching volumes — the covers sit in opposition to each other: substituting red for blue, dark for white, male for female, left for right; the place where they match is in the rage expressed on the faces of their respective protagonists. I. Can’t. Wait.

• We spoke last week about Brad Guigar² and his Kickstarter for a sequel to How To Make Webcomics; he was playing coy at that time about stretch goals, but on Friday after we at Fleen went to press, he announced two of them:
  • At US$12,500 (original goal was $10K), a new podcast would be launched where Guigar interviews interesting people in Webcomicistan
  • At US$15,000, a new episode of Webcomics Weekly

  Those first goal got met before I could tell you that the first guest lined up for the interview podcast would be George³; a little while ago the second goal was met, so it looks like we’ll get another WW. And Guigar’s updated his stretch goals again:

  • At US$17,500 (original goal was $10K), Webcomics Confidential (the new podcast) gets Zach Weinersmith for episode #2
  • At US$20,000, a second new episode of Webcomics Weekly

  I see a pattern developing here. I can’t speak for Brad, but every person that ever said, When does Webcomics Weekly come back? now appears to have a clear pathway to ensure that it does: chuck Five Large into the pot and that’s another episode, plus an episode of Webcomics Confidential. You got three and a half weeks to see how many you can get in the bank.

• Bunch of things happening this summer at the Cartoon Arts Museum for those of you in San Francisco:
  • Summer classes in cartooning for parents and kids! Wednesday 3 July and 7 August, on four different topics for just ten bucks a head.
  • This Saturday, 29 June, a free all-ages workshop entitled Where Do Toons Come From? with Robert Gordon, a Chicago- and Paris-based architecture & design educator and avid cartoonist. Bring your sketchbook and favorite pens!

  Bay Area peeps, be sure to let the rest of us know how these sessions go; they look like a blast.

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¹ And I realize that it’s an unusual thing to have a favorite book designer, but there you go.

² The handsomest man in webcomics. Grrrrowl!

³ Rohac, that is, he of the single name and Plans.

At 1:21pm EDT today, the longest day of the year (at least in the northerly climes), Abby Howard launched a Kickstart for The Last Halloween, seeking US$9000 to launch the once-weekly multi-page-updates spoooooky webcomic. At 1:39pm EDT — eighteen minutes later — 120 backers had cleared her funding goal as her totals began rolling over literally faster than I could refresh my browser.

Howard’s approaching this one smart: a lot of the rewards are non-physical, so she won’t spend months on fulfillment and shipping¹, she’s offered some high-price tiers that have attracted supporters². In this time it’s taken to write those two footnotes, she’s halfway to her first stretch goal (US$25,000) and there is no end in sight. As soon as I’m done with this sentence I’m backing this campaign (at a level sufficiently high to get a recipe for Sadness Brownies and a recording of Abby telling a scary story), and writing myself a note to be prepared to back the inevitable Kickstart for a print collection in a year or so.

I’m basically just killing time now, having worked out links and the title image and all, waiting to give you a number for the end of the first hour of funding, and here we go:

• Total Backers: 347
• Total Funding: US$18,387³

For reference, that’s nearly 25% more than the actual Strip Search cash prize, and the money keeps on a-comin’. Well done, Abby, and I can’t wait to see The Last Halloween.

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¹ Postal costs could be a killer, assuming she’s shipping from Montreal and many of her backers will be in the US.

² As of this writing, 22 minutes in, she has support for:

• $850 I will design you a custom-made monster, AND you get a death scene in the actual comic. (1 of 2 left)
• $1150 Abby will put you on her “D-List”, a page on her website with a list of names (or aliases) of all those on her D-List accompanied by a sketch of that person (from a picture supplied by you) (Please do not send me a picture of your D). She will also send you a picture of her making a sexy face. Each sexy face will be unique. (9 of 10 left)
• $3200 Abby will tell you her deepest, darkest secret. (9 of 10 left) NB: This reward is accompanied by a sketch of Abby saying Nobody pick this reward okay. You are not allowed.

³ Also the US$850 tier is now sold out, but there’s still room on the D-List!

Two new webcomic-related Kickstarts, not nearly enough time to dig into them as deeply as is probably necessary¹; forgive any superficialities, please.

• On the one hand, Fred Gallagher has bounced back from his most recent health challenges and launched a Kickstart for a “visual novel” type game adaptation of Megatokyo², which has in approximately 45 hours cleared 375% of its US$20,000 goal, hit a bunch of stretch goals, ensured a sequel, and has another 28 days to go. If US$20K seems a low bar for funding a video game, it’s a game type that akin to a text adventure overlaid with art from the comic and a bit of audio — technologically, not something that requires oodles of money, a studio full of people, and a year or more of effort. The US$150,000 stretch goal to make Megatokyo The Visual Novel Game a three-game series seems a virtual certainty.
• On the other hand, Ryan Sohmer launched his third Kickstart of the year for a multiplayer RPG-type game adapted from Looking For Group³, which has in approximately 18 hours raised more than US$40,000, putting it slightly ahead of the Megatokyo effort in the backers-per-day and dollars-per-day departments. However, a multiplayer RPG with full animation and voice acting, with the possibility (via stretch goals) of multiple O/S platform support is something that requires oodles of money, a studio full of people, and a year or more of effort.

  The fact that the basic goal — US$600,000 — is more than the final pie-in-the-sky-no-way-we’ll-reach-it-maybe stretch goal for the Megatokyo project (US$500,000) should give you an idea of the difference in scopes and scales of these two projects. If LFG & The Fork of Truth succeeds, it will be the first high-goal videogame Kickstarts not proposed by an established studio that I can recall (but I don’t follow the videogame section of Kickstarter especially closely), and may prompt further projects of this type. We’ll know soon enough, one way or the other.

• Calling it: Achewood is now on indefinite hiatus, presumably because of the efforts around the proposed animated series. It is for situations like this that RSS (whose demise is greatly overstated) was invented.

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¹ In this case, it’s because I don’t regularly follow either of the webcomics in question.

² Itself inspired by Japanese visual novels, in a nice bit of circle-closing.

³ Itself inspired by MMORPGs, in a nice bit of cirle-closing.