Sometimes stories just grab a hold of you and don’t let go. Ryan Estrada, who does everything, was kind enough to send me review copies of two of the stories in the current The Whole Story bundle, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to send stories that would worm their way into my brain and refuse to vacate, but that’s the way it turned out. By the way, spoilers ahead.

• First up: Estrada’s own Plagued, involving endless locusts, raining frogs, and Hitlercats in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. It makes for a great bar story (Estrada draws himself relating it as an open-mic piece) and it’s pretty humorous, but then he follows it up with the in-his-own-words tale of a survivor of the tsunami.

  Looh’s Story is only eight pages long, but it’s packed with a sense of feeling helpless before the might of nature, the condition of losing everything, and the simple determination to regain what went away. Looh was lucky — his family (minus one cat) survived¹, but they lost their home, and the taxi and boat that formed the basis of their income. I don’t know if Estrada has any way to let us know how Looh and his family have done in the eight years since, but I’d be fascinated to find out.

• Estrada also sent along a copy of KC Green’s The Dog’s Sins, where it turns out that a quiet, elderly, slightly pain-in-the-ass dog may have been the most vicious criminal in all of the world, and at the end of his life it’s time to account for his wrongdoing. Unfortunately, dogs don’t have souls, so God and his representatives can’t try or punish ol’ Buster or hold him to account, so it falls to his owner, teenage Rachel, to be given a time of pointless purgatory in lieu of her pooch.

  She’s supposed to be silently contemplating Buster’s wicked ways, but she’s mostly wanting to let the heavenly bureaucracy know how much this sucks. She’s left haunted by the experience, as is her family who had lost her for five years of her short life. She’ll never be the same because The Rules say somebody has to be punished, fair or not.

  Green’s loose, comical style contrasts perfectly with the sense of the universe screwing with Rachel to no good end — it’s got to be a joke, and God’s not got a very good sense of humor. It’s bleak and spare and perfectly balanced between outrage and absurdity. That’s a lot of very heavy storytelling in only 22 pages.

  Both Plagued and The Dog’s Sins are available for another 21 days via The Whole Story Kickstarter, for a name-your-own price of one dollar or more, along with more than 200 pages of other comics. It’s hard to imagine a bigger bargain this season.

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¹ Including his previously-bedridden grandmother, who was “outrunning water like she is 20.”

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

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

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

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

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

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¹ Of legal drinking age, naturally.

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

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

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

  We have big plans for 2013. Stay tuned.

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

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

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

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

  Not a bad first decade all at all.

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

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

² The Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, been with the furnace guy for much of the day (hourly charges! my heart!), and my dog is very curious why every ten-fifteen minutes I was jogging from the basement to the second floor to reset thermostats. As a result, I haven’t had the time to give the proper consideration to some items that are worth discussing; on the other hand, I will now have reliable heat in my house¹, which is kind of a good thing.

Today gets a skip for domecile-environmental reasons; we’ll talk tomorrow.

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¹ Funnily enough, in order to get my heat working properly, we’re having to look at a major repair on the air conditioning, in the midst of a cold snap in January. It’s been that kind of day.

It’s an incremental kind of day today — additional details here and there, but nothing like the big news we got yesterday. Let’s run down the list.

• Meredith Gran, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb¹, and the ghost of Ryan North got some recognition from media outlets that may pay no less attention to webcomics than we at Fleen, but it’s not their main focus. Specifically, Comics Alliance called out Gran’s Octopus Pie as one of the best comics of 2012 and The AV Club recognized Paroine, Lamb, and the late North’s work on Adventure Time in a similar fashion. Not much recognition of webcomickers elsewhere in those lists, but I see it less as token webcomics recognition and more of spectacularly talented creators hanging with the best that various comics media have to offer.
• Speaking of the best that various comics media have to offer, Jim Zub dropped some of his hard-earned wisdom (again!) at his blog, this time talking about why there are no overnight successes when dealing with big name comics properties². Highlighting his thesis for those that don’t want to read what’s clearly written:
  

  There’s no open spot waiting for you. You have to earn it. [boldface original]

  … which he highlighted with a quick rundown of a twelve-year process of getting to the point where 2012 could legitimately be called A Big Year For Zub (and 2013 potentially more so).

• Yesterday’s Strip Search news has been edited to add the name of contestant of Tavis Maiden, who was initially overlooked. Also, news came from Loading Ready Run regarding their role in hosting and producing SS, as well as a peek behind the curtains around the judging/elimination process from Mike Krahulik. Underscoring Robert Khoo’s mention of how unexpectedly connected the judges got to some of the art, Krahulik remembered:
  

  We had some no bullshit fights while judging a few of these comics. I remember one night, Robert actually had us all step outside to cool off for a bit after things got especially heated. The winner of this show will get fifteen thousand dollars and the ability to come and work at the Penny Arcade office for one year. So I expected Strip Search would be a life changing experience for the contestants, but I didn’t expect it to be a life changing experience for me.

  Krahulik also mentioned something in passing that caught my eye:

  As mentioned over on the Loading Ready Run site, the bulk of the show has already been filmed.

  Khoo wouldn’t say definitively if the SS filming was complete, or if some number of finalists were still subject to competition — reading between the lines, it appears there may be some filming yet to take place. Could be a final final elimination, or a reunion show, but I imagine we’ll get the skinny soon enough. And despite Hurricane Erika getting to indulge in the greatest cliche of reality shows³, it appears that the selection process really did avoid The Puck Situation. Something tells me when we get down to the ultimate winner/runner-up decision, the runner-up is going to be genuinely happy for the winner.

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¹ It occurs to me that I have not always given Paroline and Lamb their due in noting the success of Adventure Time, having sometimes focused too much on their late, lamented writer. Assuming that the now-exploded North left behind sufficient scripts for them to work on, they should be able to show their work to even greater effect in future issues.

² One ought to note that there may be seemingly meteoric rises in the world of indy/webcomics, but while working for yourself may compress the timeline a bit, you’re still looking at years of honing your craft before suddenly launching that upwards trajectory.

³ In an unused detail from the interview, Khoo noted that sometimes the presence of reality show tropes and cliches is because they work.

We’re less than eighteen hours into 2013 where I am, and already things are off to a fast start.

• Firstly, more news of Strip Search has come to light, including details I couldn’t get Robert Khoo to divulge if his (or, more likely, my) life depended on it. Maki [Edit to add: I’ve discovered that Maki is not uni-named, and is more fully known as Maki Naro; Fleen regrets the deviation from our usual naming conventions], from Sci-ənce dropped news that he was a participant, that production took place in December, and that the other eleven creators vying for the top prize were Lexxy Douglass, Amy Falcone, Ty Halley, Alex Hobbs, Abby Howard, Monica Ray, Katie Rice, Mackenzie Schubert, Nick Trujillo, and “Hurricane” Erika Moen.

  [Edit to add: Missed one! I took my list from Naro’s posting, and did not notice that there were only ten names listed rather than eleven; Naro initially omitted Tavis Maiden, and I missed his name on Lexxy Douglass’s post. Mr Maiden helpfully contacted me via Twitter to point out the oversight; Fleen regrets the error.]

  Best news: most of these creators aren’t known to me, so I can now get exposed to new talent. Even bester news: the three whose work I am familiar with are really damn good, which gives me confidence in the other nine. Specifically, I’ve had my eye on Douglass’s¹ art blog since she was featured on PA: The Series going through the hiring process; Rice has been tearing it up at Dumm Comics for going on five years, and Moen is basically an unstoppable force of nature. My already-high level of anticipation for SS just went through the roof.

  One last thought — I’m really hoping that Maki didn’t speak out of turn (it is mere days since Khoo wasn’t willing to tell when production took place or who was involved) and as he (Maki) rightly observes:

  Khoo is a very kind, friendly, and utterly terrifying man

  I kid, I kid, Douglass also disclosed her involvement today, but she didn’t make a show of terror so she doesn’t have as good a pull quote. Obviously, the NDA period is over — or Maki and Douglass are dangerously overconfident, not realizing that their doom is nigh.

• Speaking of fast starts, Ryan Estrada has launched the second iteration of The Whole Story (six months after the first), this time on Kickstarter. Since the launch at midnight EST, TWS: Winter 2013 has exceeded the extremely modest US$2500 goal, which had the entire purpose of reimbursing Estrada for the out-of-pocket costs that he fronted to creators and translators; everything that comes in from this point will be split among the creators (of which Estrada is one, meaning he gets a share, but not the entire total going forward).

  Moving TWS to Kickstarter from its earlier distribution site makes sense — it’s easiest to just set the “pay what you want” model to a minimum of a buck, and to add bonus content by exceeding the average amount paid in the prior incarnation, than it is to adjust those pricing structures on the fly. Having a set period of time for the campaign creates a scarcity that wouldn’t exist otherwise for electronic content.

  And holy jeeze, there’s a lot of previously-released and brand-new content available, including KC Green’s latest story comic at the pay-what-you-want level; the bonus level (a paltry thirteen American dollars) includes almost 200 pages of Ryan Andrews comics that bore themselves into your soul and don’t let go plus Green’s magnum opus, The Anime Club. At this point, just call The Whole Story the e-book equivalent of Benign Kingdom.

• Finishing up on the Kickstarter front, at the beginning of December we at Fleen mentioned a Kickstarter from longtime mystery man Eben Burgoon for a project called B-Squad, wherein characters will be killed off by the roll of a die and replaced by others waiting in the wings. Burgoon’s project is four days from completion, and I’m particularly interested in its progress, because it’s the first test of something I learned back in October.

  Some may recall how I shared some information from Kickstarter Director of Community Cindy Au, at the B9 panel at NYCC; specifically, the magic inflection point appears to be 1/3 of goal. If you reach 1/3, you’re extremely likely to succeed, and if you fail, you very likely didn’t approach even 1/3 of goal. As of this writing, Burgoon’s B-Squad is at 39% of goal, with four days to go.

  The projects I’ve had my eyes on since I learned of Au’s thumb-rule haven’t hung around the 1/3 mark for more than a few minutes before racing ahead to success, so I’m curious to see what happens here — a big push to get support and a slide over the line before the campaign closes? Or a statistical outlier? Dare we, as Kickstarter attention-payers, turn Ms Au’s prediction on its head? That could cause the laws of Kickstarter physics to start to fail and create a tear in the fabric of crowdfunding-spacetime, the likes of which not even the ghost of Ryan North could navigate. I’m just saying, if Kickstarter eats itself, we only have ourselves to blame.

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¹ That’s entirely too many “s”es.²

² So is that.³

³ And Guigar.

The last American Elf.

James Kochalka will have plenty of new projects, but for now, let’s just give him a little respect for his fourteen-plus year run at a daily diary strip.

As a bitter, haggard wordbeast (thanks Jeffrey) of long standing, I love words (or hearing myself talk, opinion varies); if you want to know how I feel about them, read Henry’s cricket bat monologue from Act II of Stoppard’s The Real Thing (too-brief snippets of which may be found here). It’s a natural that I would be drawn to the wordamancy practiced regularly by Jerry Holkins, what with his punctuation and long words. But oddly enough, Holkins is only one of two master wordbenders at Penny Arcaded Industries.

In contrast to the playfulness of language that is the hallmark of Holkins, Robert Khoo is precise: he wields words like a mirror-bright Masamune blade, separating those that shade away from his intended meaning until only the exact information he wanted to convey remains. Alternately, the words are used to construct the perfect degree of opacity that he requires in the situation. So when I had the opportunity to talk about Strip Search, the webcomics reality-TV competition that will form the next season of PA: The Series, I could feel him choosing words with utmost care, answering and deferring questions so as to simultaneously share information and not give away more than necessary.

The continual peppering of his responses with You are free to infer that and I’m not saying that and Ahhh, I really want to tell you but I can’t right now formed a delicate process of invito, derobement, parry-riposte, esquive, and remise, and many lines must needs be read between. Some of what I have for you today is definite, some of it is conjecture, some of it is maddeningly vague; some dealt with the nature and logistics of a reality competition, some with creator’s rights, and some on how the project took on a life of its own. All of it was fascinating.

Let’s start with the purely factual elements, much of which matched my speculations from about six months ago: about 1000 people applied to be part of Strip Search, and found themselves in a process not unlike the Khoo–designed hiring gauntlet, which you ought to familiarize yourself with. The initial applicants were filtered down to about 300, then 100, then 40, 20, and finally 12 via a process of skill and personality tests, phone and video interviews, and background checks. The very thorough process had the dual purpose of finding contestants that would be able to have a successful webcomics career, and also to avoid what Khoo called The Puck Situation.

For the younger folks out there, round about the third season or so of MTV’s The Real World, a housemate named Puck made himself into a pain in the ass of such monumental proportions that he was thrown out by the other residents (who included a pre-fame Judd Winick and AIDS educator Pedro Zamora). This is reassuring, as it underscores that the purpose of Strip Search is to find the person most suited to a lasting career, not to manufacture drama out of interpersonal conflict. So if this is maybe the first reality show that hasn’t sought to fill 40% of its contestants with undiagnosed narcissistic personality disorder cases, who are they?

Khoo described the final twelve as all having the ability to create very good content, and saw the purpose of the selection to find elements in the contestants that were unique. Ultimately, each person had those unique characteristics, but to find such via phone or video interviews is very challenging. Khoo summarized the process as First tier: Could you work with us? Second tier: Do you have ability to actually do the work, talent to do it, and can you do it without driving us crazy?.

The choice of twelve contestants was possibly the first place where the Strip Search concept evolved away from its original intention; the initial pitch called for ten contestants, but operational considerations dictated that twelve would be the minimum number that would actually work. By “operational considerations”, we mean “the mechanics that make a competition show work”, more on which in a moment.

Asked for details on the contestants, Khoo would divulge very little: they ran the gamut from definite fans of Penny Arcade to those who were indifferently aware of PA, but didn’t read it. Their own webcomics tended more towards humor than longform story-driven, not because Khoo, et al, felt it was more likely to succeed (in the show and as an ongoing career), but because it tended to fit the format of the show better. By coincidence, six men and six women made the cut. The youngest is 20 and the oldest 38. Having signed their contracts¹ and landed in Seattle, they surrendered all means of communications with the wider world and were locked in a giant mansion. While there would be outside trips for various challenges, they would not get away from the audio/video crews or each other for the duration².

Okay: challenges. With one exception everyone in the PA office watches a lot of reality TV, that exception being Khoo himself, who doesn’t watch TV. Fortunately, he had the able assistance of Josh Price, who watches an insane amount of reality TV and was able to educate Khoo on the rhythms and structure of competition entertainment. Khoo’s background in designing the the PAX Omegathon means that elimination competition is not new to him, and he was able to leverage that experience into the particular forms of televised competition. Khoo also credited his past running large projects as preparing him for showrunning duties, but says what was probably most helpful was the bachelor party³ that Khoo arranged for PA VP Mike Fehlauer.

Exactly what those challenges were, Khoo picked his words very carefully. He allowed that the majority of challenges had a purpose of relating to some skill that would make for a good webcartoonist, whether direct or indirect. He elaborated with two challenges that were not used in the show: asking the contestants to find the best travel deal for a convention would be a directly-relevant skill, while determining who could talk to a group of people and have them like (as on a panel at the convention) would be an indirect skill. Asked if there were any unique challenges or elements not previously seen in reality competitions, Khoo would only say to watch what they did at The end of every day.

Despite all the planning that went into designing the show, there was a significant amount of re-planning during production. Khoo said that they hadn’t anticipated How connected some us would become with the art that was created in the show, and it made us re-think the structure of the show while we were on it. He’s promised more thoughts on that once the show is running and the outside world is closer to seeing the time when the original plan was modified.

The hosting for Strip Search hasn’t been announced, but Khoo says that It will make sense. Likewise, judges aren’t being divulged, but he did say that judges were drawn from both inside and outside the PA offices, and that the judges were Always contextually appropriate to the challenges. Mike and Jerry have a role in the show, but not as a Tim Gunn-type mentor (asked if there was a Tim Gunn role on the show, Khoo said Not 100%).

With a few hojillion hours of footage, the task of cutting down into episodes (not to mention crafting a coherent story arc, a new challenge for PA:TS) was most likely considerable, as Khoo says the final number of episodes isn’t yet finalized. While the episode run time of 10 to 12 minutes (possibly as long as 15 if necessary) is pretty set, the season could run 26 to 35 episodes. It would be very difficult to frame an entire challenge in so short a runtime, and Khoo confirmed that there will not be an elimination in each episode. Curiously, he also was careful not to say that episodes would run weekly, leaving the possibility of multiple updates per week. He did say that Strip Search will launch in Q1, wrapping up by the middle of the summer⁴.

Naturally, that prompts the question of whether there will be another season of Strip Search; Khoo says that there hasn’t been a decision about further seasons yet, and I would speculate it wouldn’t make sense to have another until about the time that the first winner was finishing up the in-house year. If there will be further seasons (and Khoo’s excitement at all that was accomplished with the first season indicated more seasons would be just as exciting), I’d expect them to be interspersed with full seasons of “regular” PA:TS.

The thing about Penny Arcade is, somebody there will have an idea and what might have been a one-off project blows up huge. It doesn’t become an ongoing project because the staff wanted to make it bigger and better; they find ways to make it bigger and better because the project has already taken on its own life: a simple meet and greet has become an intercontinental series of gaming expos; a reaction to a shock jock’s denigration of gamers has become a multi-million dollar charity. Judging from Khoo’s carefully chosen words (both spoken and unspoken), Strip Search grew in the making, and the showrunners may have had as much of an unexpected ride as the participants.

Or maybe not — you can never tell with that guy.

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¹ Regarding the contracts, Khoo would only say that Strip Search is, to his knowledge, the only creative-based reality show explicitly avoiding any claim on what the contestants/winner create. We don’t own anything they make; the contract grants us a license to use the art on the show, but nothing further. They explicitly own 100% of their work, that was very important to us. Although Khoo would say nothing further, we may surmise that there is a very strong NDA component.

² Khoo would not say how long the contestants were locked in that mansion, whether eliminated contestants were released to go home or kept with the production, or even if the competition is entirely finished. There is precedent in the creative end of competition TV for finalists to be sent home for a period of time to work up a portfolio for final judgment, which may or may not be happening with Strip Search.

³ Go watch those episodes to give yourself a feel for the sort of challenges that Khoo may have dreamed up, because he wouldn’t give even the barest hints on any of them. Also note that Holkins refers to Khoo as “a depraved madman”.

⁴ Khoo was emphatic that Strip Search will not intersect in any way with their other mid-summer event, PAXAus, as the logistics of trying to tie them together would be — and this is a quote — “crazy”.

First, watch this.

Second, tell people you know to watch this.

Third, maybe drop a line to George Rohac and tell him he’s a goddamn hero.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that You Can Do Good has the potential to become the next It Gets Better, and it’s important for all the same reasons. You heard the man: I figured I’d go first. First in saying mental illness challenges me, but it’s not who I am; I’m more than what my mind tries to shoehorn me into being; I can prevail over this, and so can you.

It’s a cliche that greatly creative people have a touch of madness about them; it’s a truth-fact that in the eight or nine years I’ve spent getting to know webcomics creators, I’ve met more people with various diagnoses and medications to help control psychiatric conditions than I’d ever known in the first 35 years in my life. Could be because they’re mostly younger than I am, and were more likely to be diagnosed that people my age; could be they’re just more willing to talk about mental illness and a huge number of my contemporaries are in the psychiatric closet.

What I can tell you is, this move to destigmatize mental illness can only help things; I literally watched George’s video for the first time last night five seconds before my EMS pager summoned me to help the second patient in three hours having a psychiatric crisis. Undiagnosed, untreated, unacknowledged, these conditions eat away at lives and leave people damaged to the point of ruin. Getting help¹, not letting shame or contempt prevent that help — so many lives can be improved and saved.

Like I said — a goddamn hero, and all of his considerable contributions to comics aren’t as important as what he’s started. We can all do good; get doing.

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¹ Which in large part is going to require us all to demand that those who need help have realistic means of getting it.