Yesterday’s post was bigger than one would normally expect, particularly for a Wednesday when it is scientifically proven that nothing of interest ever happens, and yet there we were. Lost in the shuffle were some things which were (and are) worth mentioning.

• The Joey Comeau-penned, Mike Holmes-drawed Bravest Warriors comic has been upgraded from miniseries to ongoing, and that Fionna and Cake will get their own miniseries come January. Per Comeau’s twitterfeed, BW#1 will be available at NYCC (which kicked off for VIP/pro/press day a couple hours ago), and per everybody and their dog, F&C#1 will feature an alternate cover by Becky Dreistadt. Good times, my friends.
• If you look up the words “noble failure” in the dictionary, you’ll be flipping back and forth a lot because there’s probably like 700 pages between the N pages and the F pages, but let’s pretend for a moment they’d be together.

  Anyway, look ’em up, and down around reference number five or six (out of thirty-seven) there could be a mention of Zuda [no link exists¹], which did some things right (looking for new talent not already working with major comics publishers, an uncharacteristic amount of transparency for a major comics publisher), some things wrong (contests and contracts), and some things inconceivably (formatting requirements and oh lump, that interface).

  While I had some definite opinions on the entire Zudaenterprise, I remain steadfast in my stance that they popularized some damn good comics, and the people that worked there were true in their aims. This is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.²

  We recently noted some of what onetime Zudaeditor Kwanza Johnson has been up to, and this week brings news of onetime head of DC Creative Services Ron Perazza (if memory serves, he stayed on after the shutdown of Zuda, but left DC a while later in the wake of a corporate restructuring about two years back) and what he’s been up to. Namely, a new site in partnership with Daniel Govar (a one-time Zuda contributor), Comic Book Think Tank. The statement of purpose is pretty promising:

  This site is the creative playground of Ron Perazza and Daniel Govar – comic book professionals with years of experience in a wide variety of creative and techincal areas. It’s a place where we can explore what comics are (or can be) and where we can share the results of those experiments with any and all who are interested.

  I’m particularly interested to see what kinds of results Perazza and Govar might produce and encourage everybody with an interest in comics to keep an eye on their experiments. For now, the centerpiece of the site is a self-contained story, Relaunch, with others yet to come. Seems like a half-dozen or so of these stories (30 clicks to finish, but some of that results in overlays on the current page, so web page count <> printed page count) might make an nice anthology? We shall see.

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¹ Zudarest in Zudapeace.

² Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1. By the way, do you like SHAKESPEARE? And perhaps do you like things that are FUNNY and/or AWESOME, and relate to webcomics? Watch this page in the next few weeks, because my friend, will we ever have a treat in store for you.

As comics creators make their way towards New York City, questions of identity, oddly enough, are what present themselves to me today.

• To start, readers of this page are probably familiar with Box Brown, Xeric-winning comicker and publisher of Retrofit Comics. He did a terrific series inspired by death (with a side of eschatology) called Everything Dies (no link details coming if you’ll bear with me), which until today was linked over there to the right. However, it seems that sometime in the past (exact timeframe unknown), the domain lapsed. So far, no big. Then somebody else bought it. Happens all the time.

  Then earlier today my RSS feed pointed me to a series of new posts at Everything Dies by Box Brown and they were a series of incredibly convoluted, nigh-nonsensical Qs & As about comics¹. A quick check with Brown confirmed that the site was no longer under his control and my computing-risk paranoia jumped into high gear — there weren’t any obvious means of making money from link farming on the new ED by BB page, which sent me into a full, careful exam of my computer for malware².

  Meanwhile, the site sits there, outside of Brown’s control but with his name still in the title, pumping out invitations to all his former RSS subscribers, trading (either intentionally or accidentally) on his good name to pull in people for whatever purpose.

  So let’s make this one a teachable moment: you have a project that’s wrapped, or moving to another identity, or just doesn’t need its own domain any longer? Don’t just let it fade … take down the site with a lot of notice. Let your readers know that it’ll be closing shop on a given date³, that after that point in time any references to that domain have nothing to do with you. Send out RSS notifications, make it as obvious as possible, and when the time comes, turn out the lights and lock the door on your terms. A domain name ain’t worth but a few bucks a year, but your name is all you’ve got to build your brand on.

Other things that people are putting their names on:

• Really? People are still having this discussion? [credit to Sean Kleefeld, who was the first person I saw to point out the stupid] In case you didn’t follow that first link, it’s Pearls Before Swine (which I like) creator Stephan Pastis (whom I’ve met very briefly and liked) talking about lots of things, but including this:
  

  “Now, to make it, you have to go that web route. Many of those guys, from Penny Arcade to Cyanide and Happiness to The Perry Bible Fellowship — which are all excellent — claim to make a living, but how do you know? I can tell you that even if someone does a strip and it’s fairly popular online, the money is not online. I question a lot of claims about the money being made, and the question remains that if things continue to go that route for newspapers, and you have to make money online, how do you do it?”

  Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ.

  Okay, in the altogether vain hope of putting this damn thing to bed, here’s what I’m going to do. Tomorrow, or this weekend, or sometime during the run of NYCC, I’m going to seek out Matthew Inman (whom I’ve met briefly, and liked quite a lot), who has a new book out, and I’m going to ask him if he’d be willing to release an approximate copies-sold total for that book for, say, the three months of quarter 4, 2012. Then come January we’ll run that number here, and Pastis can compare it to the first three months of whichever Pearls collection he likes.

  And then maybe we’ll all finally come to the conclusion that no, the money isn’t online, it’s in the merchandise and the collections, and the same damn thing has always been true for syndicated strips. One last time for those at the back: Sparky or Jim or whichever megasuccess you wish to discuss did not become richer than God off of syndicate checks. The money came from getting the people who read the strip (and essentially paid nothing for it) to buy other stuff with characters on it⁴.

• Speaking of Sparky Schulz, opinions of the opinionators vary, but there seems to be consensus that a Peanuts movie is a bad idea. If we can all agree on that fundamental point, I’ma suggest that we not get in each other’s faces about the consistency or purity or whatever of opinions, but also that we not make a thing about this project between now and whenever it might see fruition. I plan to put it out of my mind and not give it either the money or attention that would feed it.

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¹ At some point, they may have been written in English. I think that a mechanical translator was used to shift them to at least one other language, then back to English, then copy-edited by somebody that took English in school about fifteen years back and hasn’t spoken it since. Bizarrely confounding word choices and sentence construction that I initially mistook for a Dadaist artistic statement by Brown.

² I didn’t find any, but I don’t run my rig with garden-variety settings, most especially with respect to my almost total non-acceptance of Java, Flash, Javascript, plugins, and everything else that provides a vector for those with bad intent.

³ A nice demonstration of this was recently provided by Secretary of Geek Affairs Wil Wheaton, who revived Wil Wheaton Dot Net after years of an “in-exile” site hosted on another domain. He fixed up the one named after him, and he let people know about the move in advance.

⁴ Okay, I have to paraphrase here, since it was related by Dave Kellett during his Stripped panel at San Diego this year, and while there’s video, it’s for Kickstarter backers only and thus I can’t link you to it in good conscience. It involved Kellett and his filming partner Fred Schroeder arriving at Jim Davis’s PAWS, Inc. HQ and being shown a room, possibly 3000 square feet, filled floor to ceiling with Garfield merch. Dave asked if that was everything Garfield-related ever made, and Davis replied, “Oh, no — that’s just for this year.”

Also in that same panel: a clip from the movie explaining exactly how you make money online which is a discussion that’s been had a million bloody times.

While we all know that New York Comic Con opens later this week (Thursday for VIPs, pros, etc., Friday for everybody), and we at Fleen have mentioned some of the programming taking place, there will also be a variety of creators appearing and times and in places on the floor that you may wish to note.

• First up, Scott C, who has a pair of panels, will be spending much of his time on the floor around publishers Titan (booth 832) and/or Insight (booth 1882), with signings on Friday and Saturday. Full details at Mr C’s website. Also moderating a panel on Friday evening, and sliding between Artist Alley (far north) and the ShiftyLook booth (far south, and more about them in just a bit): Jim Zub, the hardest-working man in comics. Seriously, if James Brown worked half as hard as Zub, he’d still be on stage despite having died in 2006.
• No panels, but Meredith Gran will be tabling with First Law of Mad Science creators Mike Isenberg and Oliver Mertz (booth 2276); Gran won’t be at the show until Friday, but when she does, she will have (among other wares) copies of this week’s new issue of Marceline and the Scream Queens. Algebraic!
• Easiest for people who aren’t going to NYCC to catch up with will be the parade of creators and announcements at the ShiftyLook Arcade O’ Fun (booth 3374), since they’re livestreaming much of the weekend. If you want to catch Anthony Clark, Christopher Hastings, and Cardboard Cutout Ryan North’s big announcement, that will be Thursday at 5:00pm. Given that it’s with ShiftyLook, and with ShiftyLook does old Japanese videogame properties, you can probably guess at the outlines of the project, but let me share this bit: It’s a major property, with maybe the highest name recognition of anything that SL has done so far.

  Considering the amazing job that North has been doing writing the Adventure Time comics, and given what an unstoppable lineart/coloring team Hastings and Clark form, I’m predicting that you will be pleased when the announcement drops. If that weren’t enough, Clark, Hastings, and CC North will have various signings, meet/greets, and interviews throughout the weekend, as well as an appearance with Gran at SVA (students/alumni only).

• Know where else Clark will be? Over with his Benign Kingdom (booth 166) compatriots, which may include at various times Yuko Ota & Ananth Panagariya, Aaron Diaz¹, KC Green, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Evan Dahm, and if fortune smiles on us all, George. Rumor has it that copies of B9.5 may be present for your obtaining.
• Side note: KC Green, as previously mentioned, will also be spending time in Artist Alley with Kel McDonald (table J8). And hey, you know what else Green and McDonald have shared recently? Contributions in the Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales anthology, which is now available for purchase by non-Kickstarter backers. Know what else is also now available for purchase by non-Kickstarter backers? The Spike-curated Smut Peddler, featuring quality it-on-getting as lovingly depicted by the cream (so to speak) of the crop of webcomickers.
• Speaking of independently-created books that are getting a lot of good notices, know where McDonald, Spike, and other creators just might want to invest one copy of their books and about five bucks in shipping? How about the home base of a well-respected bunch of media junkies:
  

  Will you review my CD / book / movie / video game / poetry / pottery?
  Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. Please bear in mind that we’re presented with an enormous amount of material every day, so it’s simply impossible to respond to every item that crosses our desks, much less review it. Items for review consideration can be sent to The A.V. Club at our Chicago office (The Onion, 212 W. Superior St., Suite 200, Chicago, IL, 60654), but we absolutely cannot guarantee that anything you send us will be covered.

  They get a lot of stuff, but I imagine they get fewer comics than DVD screeners and music, so if you think you’re good enough to get noticed by the big leagues, take a shot. And what the hell: I don’t guarantee that anything sent to me will be covered either, and many, many more people read The AV Club² than read my little corner of the internets, and people still send me stuff.

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¹ Site note: Diaz will no longer be referred to on this page as The Latin Art-Throb; rather, he will now on first reference be annotated as Tolkien Scholar Par Excellence.

² Many, many more.

For those that follow this page to an unhealthy degree (hi, Mom), there was no post on Friday due to traveling, but today is two different holidays in the US and Canada and I’m totally allowed to take off from writing but I am here making up Friday because I love you people.

The reason I was traveling on Friday was to attend a wedding, but that doesn’t do it sufficient justice. Much like how Sherlock Holmes would only refer to Irene Adler as the woman, there is every evidence that this should be forever known as the wedding. In fact, you can all stop getting married now, as there is no chance that you will have more than one of these things at your wedding, much less all of them:

• A karaoke party featuring Kate Beaton and Carly Monardo channelling a murderously angry Cathy berating Heathcliff via the medium of Kate Bush.
• A service officiated by Holly Black, with a meditation on the meaning of marriage as provided by Wikipedia¹.
• More LEGO^® brand building block miniature figure dudes and ladies than you can shake a stick at; I got the world’s angriest mail carrier.
• The Beer of the Gods; that’s its actual name.
• Toasts to the happy couple offered by Stan Lee who looked an awful lot like both Chris Hastings and David Malki !; he invented the comical books and also getting married.
• Bilingual good wishes sent by the Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada, delivered via accredited ambassadors Beaton, Butcher, and North².
• An actual ice cream truck, turning an entire cohort of grown-ass people³ into little kids clamoring for Choco Tacos (it’s like a taco but made out of a Klondike bar) and Shrek bars (it’s like Shrek’s head but made out of cold Shrek’s head).
• Wangs, fire, and possibly wangs on fire.
• A brunch where a celebrated artist pelted a teen with handfulls (hand-fulls? handsfull?) of mini marshmallows and also a new cocktail was invented⁴.

These are things that happened, and they will not happen again; it was an organic, spontaneous, joyous celebration that will never be equaled. Holly, Jeffrey, you win at getting married, so said we all.

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¹ Citation needed.

² Long live the Queen/Livre le Québec libre.

³ As opposed to grown ass-people.

⁴ Agent Paperklip and I accidentally made something delicious. As this happened hard on the heels of a conversation about Tumblr, we named this concoction The Apple Privilege:

Hey, everybody. Getting in some EMT training today, so I’ve got limited time and limited net access. Here’s something even more exciting than the stuff I’m learning about — details on Kris Straub’s new comic:

I’ve been a little nervous to start my next series. Chainsawsuit is doing well, but I have a need to tell stories.

The first strip of my new series, Broodhollow, will go up October 8th. Set in the 1930s, Broodhollow is a cosmic horror adventure — imagine if Tintin went to Innsmouth. It’ll be full-color double-size strips, three times a week, updating Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Broodhollow is a sister city of Ichor Falls, the haunted town setting of my horror fiction, as well as the site that gave rise to Candle Cove. I thought about actually setting the new series in Ichor Falls itself, but I think that would have bound me too much to its established oppressive tone. There will be a little crossover, although Broodhollow is a different city altogether, very bright and inviting at first glance. There’s a reason to want to be there. But the scary parts will hopefully be genuinely unsettling in the style of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Stephen King, all the writers I appreciate. Never gory or slasher-y, but a sense of building dread that accompanies the unknown.

I also am working on it in terms of “chapters,” which can really be considered books. The first book will be between 60 and 80 strips, and it’ll tell a finished story. Enough to print as a stand-alone book. If there’s excitement about it, then I’ll do a second book. I told the story in Starslip very soap-opera, very seat-of-my-pants. I want everything in this series to cohere, to fit, to have been planned from the beginning.

Straub’s various Ichor Falls creations have been among the more disturbing media I’ve ever consumed willingly. This is gonna be creepy in the best possible way.

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¹ Mass Casualty Incidents; burns are bad, MCIs are bad, and burn MCIs are the the worst. Consider: there are fewer than 1900 burn beds in the entire United States, and that is an overwhelming majority of the burn beds on the planet. So don’t play with matches and for glob’s sake, never smoke around an ambulance because it’s carrying enough oxygen to roast a bus.

Okay, here’s the deal. The Javits Center is a nightmare, thanks to a bunch of things, not the least being ongoing construction.

Last year, the work zone pretty much bisected the show floor, consuming perhaps 20% of all potential booth space, leaving about 60% of the floor space on the south side of the divide and the remainder on the north side. This year, the work has shifted south, with perhaps a quarter of the floor space south of the work area and 75% to the north, so if you knew your way around the floor last time, you don’t now.

Secondly, the numbering has reversed: last year, the booth numbers increased as you went northwards (matching the street-numbering pattern of Manhattan), but this year the high numbers are downtown and the low numbers up.

Thirdly, NYCC has never gotten around to arranging a webcomics or indy-creators zone; to be fair, it doesn’t draw the mass of established creators the way that San Diego (home of the original Sexy Lagoon) does, so it’s would be difficult to do on that basis. On the other hand, to see people of interest to readers of this page will require traversing the entire floor, from literally a back corner on the south side to literally a back corner on the north side.

Fourthly, the Artist Alley is, for all intents and purposes, in another building. See the white bit that’s attached to the Javits Center in the picture up above? That’s the North Pavilion, and that’s where Artists Alley is, a full block north of the far-north wall of the main center. So what we are saying is, break out the comfortable shoes if you want to see webcomickers and their natural allies.

Here is the main floor:

The top of the map is WEST.

Now you’ll notice that there are four highlighted areas: the extreme southwest corner, just to the right of the construction zone (that big grey blob) a somewhat sizeable oval, and the extreme northwest corner. Here’s what you’ll find in those spots:

• Waaaay southwest at booth 3374: ShiftyLook, with a stack of licensed webcomics, a freeplay arcade, Anthony Clark, Chris Hastings, and Cardboard Ryan North.
• By the construction zone at booth 2153: Brad Guigar, who continues a tradition of being in close proximity of the pass-through tunnels skirting construction.
• In the big blob in the middle, roughly aisles 900 – 1200: Oni Press (booth 1221), :01 Books (booth 1214), The Oatmeal (booth 1061), SMBC (booth 1023), Blind Ferret (booth 950), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 944).
• Waaaay northwest at booth 166: Benign Kingdom, presumably including creators from both B9 and B9.5.

Now if you exit the main show floor to the bottom of the map shown, go down one floor, and head north, you’ll come to the tunnel to Artists Alley, where you’ll find the likes of Chris Giarrusso (table C10), Kel McDonald & KC Green (table J8), Bill ‘n’ Gene (table W1), Jim Zub (table W11¹), and Ramón Pérez (table X8).

Granted, a lot of this could have been avoided had the long-running construction wrapped up sooner, but you have to wonder if maybe there are some table-holders that possibly don’t meet the definition of “comics” even at its most inclusive, and perhaps might have been bumped to allow everybody to be in one building? I’m lookin’ at you, Baconery (booth 3237). Yes, I get it, you’re a delicious meme but you aren’t goddamned comics.

Let’s finish this on a positive note: Sin Titulo is racing to a conclusion and is so close you can taste it. Read it now.

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¹ Should Zub wish to talk business with his ShiftyLook associates, it’s literally going to be a half-mile walk to do so.

You get to do that when you’re an unpaid internet opinion-monger, you know. Even though nobody has to actually honor the Day in question, I have a feeling that you’ll be willing to do so in this case¹ because the books in question are very cool.

Today is the release date for both Hope Larson’s A Wrinkle in Time (The Graphic Novel) and Mark Siegel’s Sailor Twain (or, The Mermaid in the Hudson), both of which have earned your attention and time. But Gary, I hear you cry, I am of but limited means and cannot afford to obtain both books for myself, what should I do? Look, you can sell plasma² like twice a week, just read them both and thank me later.

• Speaking of Hope Larson, her husband has done some comics that a few people have read, and he’s done a really smart interview with Andrew Hussie about Homestuck, the Homestuck Kickstarter³, and all the odd interactions that constitute “fandom”. Highly recommended.
• Speaking of crowdfunding campaigns, Matthew Inman declared his favorite part of the recently-concluded Operation: Let’s Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum to be a bit of mathematical elegance. If you feel like talking about things that are divisible by three with Inman, you’ll be able to ask him in person at New York Comic Con next week.
• Speaking of NYCC, the rundown on when you can find Messers Clark, Hastings, and PseudoNorth at the ShiftyLook booth has been posted, along with the fact that the “booth” is actually a freeplay arcade. If it’s anything like the arcade that ShiftyLook put together for a party at SDCC, it will be awesome.

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¹ Or “these cases”, as the case may be.

² Or do experimental drug testing, or sell organs. Whatever.

³ Sitting at US$2.07 million and just about 48 hours exactly to go as I’m writing this; final prediction: US$2.3 million +/- US$100K depending on whether or not the end-of-campaign bounce materializes. It usually manifests in the last week of a campaign, but this one has been atypical in so many ways.

Warning: there are things in today’s post that will likely make you go Ohhhh, ick.

• Updating the Rich Burlew Does Not Like Broken Glass story, a whole bunch of words and one photo that cuts straight to the heart of the matter; Burlew reports that his right hand will remain in a cast for another month or so, then get to see what kind of functionality his thumb has. Add in rehab and physical therapy, it could be a while before Order of the Stick sees updates, and longer still before his remaining Kickstarter rewards get produced.

  While this page is surely of the opinion that delays in fulfilling KS promises does nothing but damage the credibility of those who use the service, we also recognize that Extraordinary Circumstances will sometimes occur, and this surely qualifies. Also, I am strongly considering a Kickstarter of my own to raise the funds to buy chain mail oyster-shucking gloves for all my favorite creators¹.

• Speaking of painful and Kickstarter: that US$1.00 pledged of US$200,000 goal (presuming it isn’t canceled sometime in the next 44 days) is painfully sarcastic and gonna leave a mark. Then again, the chief hook of the campaign in question is to convince starting-out cartoonists and comickers that they should pay US$60 for the privilege of submitting a single page to a comics anthology which means that it’s official: the vanity press model has decided to make a simultaneous run at both comics and Kickstarter.
• Speaking of painful: some folks (cough, cough, Dave Kellett) find JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion to be a painful read, but these folks are wrong. Wrong and bad and wrong some more. For those that stand in opposition to the unbelievers, Aaron Diaz² has been threatening for the past week or so to do one painting per chapter of The Silmarillion, and the first of them dropped today.

  Future installments will be presented at Diaz’s Tumblr under the heading of Silmarillion Project, and here’s hoping that perhaps Diaz kicks in multiple paintings for some of the longer chapters so as not to short-change them³. Somewhere, somebody in Middle Earth Enterprises gets to decide who does the annual calendars and such around Tolkien’s works, and I think Diaz could easily spend the next half-decade illustrating scenes from The Silmarillion without feeling a lack of inspiration.

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¹ I know of at least one top-tier creator with an insurance policy on his hands; this is looking less like paranoia and more like prudent planning every day.

² The Latin Art-Throb.

³ For example, Of Thingol and Melian, the fourth chapter of Quenta Silmarillion is only a page and a half in my copy of the first American edition, but the Akallabêth is more than twenty pages and yes, I am a gigantic nerd.

Boo! Did I startle you? No? Well, it’s good that you have a stout heart, as today is full of scarifying scares that are very scary. Boo.

• First up, Spike has decided that the natural followup to her phenomenally successful and dirty (in the best possible way), filthy (ditto) Smut Peddler anthology is to shift from the erotic to something a bit more thanatotic: a horror anthology to be entitled The Sleep of Reason. Much like Smut Peddler, The Sleep of Reason¹ will feature an open submission process, with details around Halloween, so if you have ideas for spooky stories, now’s the time to start developing them.

  But don’t get too far ahead of yourself — while Spike’s made it known that she’s looking for full-page comic work (and legit scary, please) — things like minimum or maximum lengths are still unannounced. Since it’s Spike that we’re talking about, it’s paying work, with contributions due in May 2013, and publication to follow (judging from Smut Peddler’s example, probably around November or December). So if you think that you can bash together a visual story as disturbing as, say, Emily Carroll’s work, keep your eyes on Spike’s twitterfeed for further news.

• Know what’s lost some of its original, terrifying nature? Mermaids. Lure you to your death beneath the waves, or to be dashed upon the rocks? Lost to time, reduced to shilling Starbucks. The menace of mermaids is lost to nearly everybody, with only occasional reminders that mermaids were not always very nice. Still, it can’t all be doom and gloom, and Mark Siegel’s decided to celebrate the imminent release of his own menacing mermaid story with a goofy little story, complete with double entendre title.
• Sometimes, the monsters are real. They lay in wait, they demand their tolls, and then they … do nothing, actually. If! You! Dare! read the story of one brave man, the abyss he stared into, and the monstrously indifferent treatment that he received, treatment that would have driven a lesser man to madness, despair, and death! It’s seriously spooky; no, really.²

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¹ Per Spike, the title is taken from a piece by Goya entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Creepy, but I always was more of a Hieronymus Bosch man myself; standing before his magnificent Last Judgement in the Groeningemuseum you simply cannot look at the center panel and not take away deep meaning. For me, the principal lesson was Screw not with the bunnies of the Apocalypse. Don’t even get me started on The Garden of Earthly Delights Heck of a weirdo, ol’ Jerry B.

² Okay, not that spooky, but c’mon, it’s Guigar. PS: Boo.a href=

Guh, work just threw me for a loop, so this is gonna be quick.

• Okay, I missed an anniversary, but to be fair, so did the creators. Today’s Not Invented Here featured a note from co-creator Bill Barnes noting that NIH is now three years old. A quick click back to the first strip shows it was actually on the 21st of September, making today the 1,102nd dayiversary for Barnes, Paul Southworth, and Jeff Zugale. Congrats, guys, and here’s to 1,102 days more.
• Also missed by a couple of days (only three this time, and fortunately Heidi Mac caught it): the launch of a new webcomic that will be worth your attention. Longtime readers of this page know that I usually don’t make recommendations on brand-new strips, but there are some reasons to vary from that caution, particularly with established creators. And truthfully, it’s hard to be more established than Faith Erin Hicks, especially when the webcomic in question is her next serialize-online-print-when-done project, in conjunction with first-time writer Prudence Shen.

  Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong has 20 pages up already, has set about three different plotlines in motion, and given us a clear insight into the personalities of about six different characters without anything feeling forced or rushed. Daily updates start on Monday, and I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that we all end up liking this at least as much as Friends With Boys¹, on account of :01 Books (who are hosting NCPGW in webcomic form and publishing in book form in May 2013) don’t associate themselves with junk, yo.

• Finally, only a day behind: there’s a new website design up for The Beat, and it’s pretty awesome. Everybody take a look and tell Heidi I sent you.

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¹ And if you didn’t like Friends With Boys, what happened in your past that rendered you incapable of liking good things?