So many talented folks to talk about today. Are you ready? You should be ready.

Updating more people at SDCC (which kicks off, goodness, a week from tomorrow for Preview Night), namely:

• I missed Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson because they’re exhibiting under the name Monster Milk, their LA-based collective of friends and colleagues; had I but known, I would have pointed you to booth 1232. And I managed to completely overlook the fact that Kazu Kibuishi has taken out space under the name of Bolt City Productions, booth 2235; lots of Flight, Flight Explorer, and Explorer: Mystery Boxes contributors will be dropping by there, so keep your eyes open.
• Speaking of big comics shows, the Harvey Awards have announced their nominees, to be voted upon and handed out at Baltimore Comic-Con, 8 and 9 September in (obviously) Baltimore. As is often the case with the Harveys¹ there are some headscratchers and discussions as to whether or not a particular nominee really belongs on the ballot, but they’ve done a pretty good job in the category of Best Online Comics Work, and I don’t have any complaints with this year’s field:
  • Battlepug, Mike Norton
  • Bucko, Erika Moen and Jeff Parker (and just in time for Bucko’s print release)
  • Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff
  • Gronk, Katie Cook
  • Hark! A Vagrant, Kate Beaton

  Fantasy (with giant critters), murder-mystery (with juggalos and dick jokes), swashbuckling action (with kick-ass ladies), all-ages humor (with cutie-pie of a monster), and history/literature used as a prism to comment on the state of society (with Strong Female Characters searching out yogurt that makes you poop) represents a pretty wide swathe of story forms and genres. Nicely done, nominators!

  The Harveys also have a number of creators from the web/indy-comics world scattered through the other categories, including Beaton’s print edition of Hark! A Vagrant (Special Award for Humor in Comics), Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost (Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers, and this page’s Best Comic of 2011), the many talented creators of Flight #8 (Best Anthology), and Beaton one mo’ ‘gin as Best Cartoonist. Fleen wishes all of the nominees the best of luck.

• Speaking of burying the lede, you have probably noticed by now (since the story broke yesterday while I was messing with SDCC session listings) that Pendleton Ward’s other Frederator Studios animated series, Bravest Warriors, is getting a comics treatment, and it comes courtesy of artist Mike Holmes and A Softer World scribe Joey Comeau, with cover work from Boxer Hockey creator Tyson Hesse.

  Should I mention that it is completely a coincidence that Ward’s Adventure Time comics are written by Ryan North², in whose attic Joey Comeau once lived? Or that Mr North can often be found in proximity to Mr Comeau in a shirtless and/or unconscious state? Coincidence?

  Only in the sense that Mr North and Mr Comeau, both being incredibly creative individuals with a habit of seeking out likewise creative individuals, would inevitably meet. And in all honesty, I can’t think of anybody better suited than Joey Comeau to embody the spirit of teens that save aliens with the power of their emotions, since we all know that Joey Comeau is 147% unfiltered emotions by weight.

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¹ Which are nominated by petition, with no jurying or comitteeing between the masses and the nominations, resulting in sometimes unusual choices dominating with nods in multiple fields.

² Nexus of all Webcomics Realities and So Many Other Things, You Guys.

Programming for SDCC is up, and despite the fact that the “webcomic” tag doesn’t seem to be in use this year¹, I have plowed through and found those sessions that are most intersecting with the interests of this page. As usual, I’ve probably missed some, so let me know of any that should be included, yes?

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

I’ll be doing my best to attend these sessions (obviously, except for where they overlap), and trying my damndest to avoid the Hall H line at all other times. See y’all there.

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¹ This could either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on if you read it as a marginalization of webcomics, or a recognition that webcomics and comics are not entirely distinct things.

The website teased on Friday is found here: http://www.the-whole-story.com/. Go get some comics and pay what you want.

I got other stuff for you today.

• Scoop! Fleen can reveal exclusively exactly what it is that Ryan Estrada (and a passel of co-conspirators) have been working on. Launching Monday, 2 July, all of the projects that he’s teased (and more!) will be available as a digital comics equivalent of the famed Humble Indie Bundle.

  The Whole Story will feature as many as seven full e-books, a combo platter of new and established creators, combining both new and previously-seen work. Three books await you for free, with the remaining four available at various purchase tiers, adding up to a total of nearly 500 MB of comics. We’ll give the launch address on Monday, and remember: you’ll only have about three weeks to grab what you can. They’re in Retina resolution, and in case you were wondering — Estrada’s dropping hints that this will be an ongoing publication channel, so look for more bundles in the future.

• Next up: updates to where to find everybody at SDCC; Zach Weinersmith will be hanging with Unshelved (booth 2300), Bill Holbrook and John Lotshaw will be with Moonbase Press (table L-02); Weregeek and Little Vampires are tabling together (booth 1831), and Keenspot are indeed double-boothing.
• Next, if you’re in Philadelphia this weekend, you can watch webcomics own Brad Guigar¹ perform stand-up on Saturday night. Fun starts at 3:30pm.
• Shaenon Garrity² has launched a new webcomic where she recaps one X-Files episode per week and the first one is magic. I shouldn’t be surprised, since Shaenon + recap = comedy gold, but there is a very deep downside to this new endeavour: if she keeps to a one-a-week schedule and does them in order, it will be early July 2013 before she gets to Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and September of the same year before she reaches Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”. This is tragic.

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¹ He’s dreamy.

² Tiki Queen of the Greater Bay Area and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, non-Ryan North Division.

Update to add: I will be noting people I missed the first time around in later postings and adding them after the fact here (although I’m not redrawing maps). Keep coming back!

At long last, the 2012 edition of The Fleen Guide To Webcomickers In The Wild is releasing today (and, as always, corrections and additions are welcome), but first a quick followup on an old story. One may recall that last month I spent some time playing Pai Gow with Mike Krahulik and Robert Khoo in Las Vegas, and as a result learned about their new Lookouts comic with Cryptozoic Entertainment. This morning the good folks at Cryptozoic were kind enough to send me some additional info, which I am happy to share with you.

Issue #1 will debut at SDCC, rolling out to comics shops in late August; those of you with Comixology accounts can jump on that bad boy on 6 July. This will be an ongoing series, broken up into six-issue story arcs, each focusing on the Lookouts earning a particular badge. Personally, I’m most interested in reading the excerpts from the Lookouts Handbook which will be featured in each issue. Oh, and the SDCC issue will feature covers by Krahulik and Doug TenNapel, obtainable from Cryptozoic’s pop-up store in the Gaslamp.

Okay, Comic Con floor map. You can get the full thing here [PDF], or just use the images I’m including instead. We’ll start with the full floor map:

… and use it as our basis of comparison. Most of the people that have something to do with the sorts of things we talk about here are concentrated in the right half of that map, so let’s zoom in on that a bit, shall we?

As you can see, three highlighted areas are called out: the Small Press Pavilion (at the top, in lavender), the Webcomics Pavilion (below and to the right of the SPP, in orange), and the Independent Press Pavilion (down at the bottom, in pink). We’ll be zooming in on some of these areas, starting with the two at the top of the map:

Webcomics Pavilion:

Small Press Pavilion:

They’re not in either Pavilion proper, but the good folks of Oni Press, who deal with many webcomics people, should also be visible over there to the left.

Now let’s hop over to the Independent Press Pavilion for a moment:

Independent Press Pavilion:

Now let’s look a little further out of the immediate pavilions, yes?

Using the pavilions, you should be able to navigate pretty easily to find Alaska Robotics (with special booth guest Marian Call, oh my goodness, booth 1033), the Cartoon Art Museum (whose ongoing sketch-a-thon will attract a plethora of talent too numerous to list here to booth 1930); immediately behind CAM, you’ll find Weregeek and Little Vampires (booth 1831); the aforementioned Doug TenNapel (getting ratfisty and nnewty at booth 1601); Drawn & Quarterly (one may find Kate Beaton calendars at booth 1629); and First Second (where one may find Vera Brosgol signing, or cowering, or both, booth 1323).

We’ll have to go a little outside all the prior areas for the next hot spot:

BOOM! Studios/KaBoom are all off by their lonesome, but they’re where you can find all your Adventure Time/Marceline and the Scream Queens needs met, including possibly appearances by some of the many webcomickers that have worked on those books (booth 2743). Finally, not really fitting in on any of these maps (except for the right-hand one up above), between the big blocks marked MARVEL and SIDESHOW COLLECTIBLES you may find Bolt City Productions, for all your Flight-related needs (booth 2235).

Okay! Time to leave the right half of the hall and venture waaaaay down to the left half:

Literally at the far side of the hall is where you’ll find the Artists Alley, and in its vicinity, one more webcomicker. Zooming in:

Hall G:

Whew! Lots of webcomickers to catch up with this year. Thing is, I know that other creators are attending, so if you know of anybody that’s co-boothing and not specifically listed, let me know and I’ll update here, thanks. Come back tomorrow and we’ll have the first roundup of programming information.

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¹ Please note that I’m going by the names as listed on the SDCC site, which means that I don’t necessarily know if somebody is booth-sharing if they’re not listed under their own name. Corrections cheerfully accepted. title=Click to see the section of the floor where you

San Diego Comic Con has gotten an exhibitor’s list/map posted, which we at Fleen will be poring over to find persons and places of interest to the sort of person that reads this page. Honestly, I’m not sure if this is dropping with less lead time than in prior years (and I’m too lazy to go check), but it sure feels like it. With any luck, we’ll be able to report shortly on programming as well.

• Speaking of SDCC, being on the press list means I get all kinds of PR announcements about who is gonna be there. In case you were curious, the You Have Got To Be Kidding Me I Don’t Even Award (2012) has just been decided, on account of nothing is going to top this:
  

  E L JAMES AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING “FIFTY SHADES OF GREY” TRILOGY WILL SIGN COPIES OF HER BOOKS AT COMIC-CON SAN DIEGO 2012. [SHOUTING original]

  It goes on for another couple of paragraphs after that; no word yet on whether or not the TwiHards have adopted Ms James as one of their own, but in case they have, there are new rules on lining up for days in advance.

• On the topic of actual comics, note should be made of the fact that Tyler Page is releasing a pretty sizable chunk of work (namely, pretty much the entire ten year history of this Stylish Vittles work) out there as an e-book for free:
  

  Ten years ago I published a book called Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl. It was the beginning of my professional comics career (such that it is). Two more books followed.

  I have put together a 10th Anniversary Collection eBook which includes all three original books, as well as the conclusion that came years later: Stylish Vittles 4 – Behind the Page: The Saga of Rob Harvard. Additionally I put together a “Director’s Cut” eBook in which I eliminated all of the elements of the original books which seemed unnecessary to present a shorter, simpler narrative. Finally, included in the Deluxe Collection, are two Appendices: Appendix One is almost one thousand pages of process material – outlines, scripts, sketches, layouts, etc. Appendix Two contains all of the material I did which led up to the creation of the Stylish Vittles books.

  For reference, that’s more than 2000 pages of comics work that will cost you nothing but bandwidth (download here) and time. May I be so crass to mention (because Page is soft-pedaling this bit) that if you like what you read, you might want to toss him some money? I’m still refining a private rule of thumb for freely-distributed media that I enjoy:

  Mentally track how many pages you read, buy $1 of merch for every 10 pages.

  … on account of it falls neatly in line with buying a book collection covering a year’s worth of strips, but when creators like Page drop a few thousand pages on you, that’s the equivalent of ten or twelve books right there.

  So — sliding scale! Ten cents a page up to 250 pages, then another buck per 100 pages after that. Even if it’s not to my liking and I end up deleting it, I figure I ought to kick in a couple bucks to cover the network costs. Complicated? Maybe. But I’m trying to be an ethical consumer of media as well as a supporter of creators. Alternate models welcome in the comments.

• Speaking of potentially-bankrupting work collections, Ryan Estrada keeps hinting at “secret projects” and (in private communication) being “so very busy”. We all know what happens when Estrada gets busy in secret, right? Three dozen guest strips in one day. Until he decided to double that a year later¹.

  Until he decided he’s got bigger fish to fry, meaning that whatever is coming will most likely put the scope/scale of prior releases to shame, and thus can only be termed The Estradapocalypse. Readers are urged to stockpile canned goods, plastic sheeting, and duct tape in anticipation.

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¹ Including, it should be noted, a guest strip for this blog featuring Masthead Guy (who, contrary to an IFAQ, is not meant to be me).

Let’s get the crowdfunding items out of the way first, shall we?

• Surprising absolutely nobody, Matthew Inman crushed his BearLove Good, Cancer Bad goal by a factor of eleven¹. All that remains now is for him to take the photo (presumably at the bank, because I wouldn’t want to carry around the price of a house in cash without multiple armed guards); with any luck, the bills will be small enough that they add up to a really big pile of money that Inman can roll around in. That will be one awesome photo.
• Surprising absolutely even more nobodies, Zach Weinersmith is up over 250% of his fundraising goal for Trial of the Clone in the first 36 hours or so. To celebrate, he’s released the first couple of paragraphs of TotC as a public update, which features this beautiful summation of life’s fundamental meaning:
  

  The first emotion you feel in your life is disappointment. Interestingly, it’ll also be your last emotion, and about 80% of the emotions in between.

  Spoiler alert: assuming that Weinersmith is talking about the protagonist of TotC and not you personally, that 80% estimate may be on the low side.

• Surprising, if mathematically possible, negative anybody, running a crowdfunding campaign is not an exact science, and careful planning is a must. Ed Brisson recently wrapped an IndieGoGo campaign for Murder Book 3, and he’s got some lessons to share with you, should you be inclined to learn. Pay special attention to the final accounting of funds about 2/3 of the way down the page:
  

  Of that $2311, here are the expenses:

  • Fees (PayPal, IndieGoGo): $172.39
  • Printing: $1361.92
  • Shipping & Shipping Supplies: $620
  • Money to Artists: $811
  • Total: -$654.31

  Yes. Negative $654.31. [emphasis original]

  If that didn’t catch your interest, you are not paying enough attention to have a crowdfunding campaign.

• Noted at The AV Club in their review of last night’s episode of Adventure Time:
  

  If you did not pick up last week’s Adventure Time #5, you missed one of the best comics of the entire year². Not only do you get a story where BMO pits Finn versus Jake for a cupcake, but there’s an amazingly trippy Paul Pope story in which our duo goes on an adventure through the consciousness of a comic book creator. And Marceline And The Scream Queens comes out next month!

  Well done Ryan North, and pre-emptively well done, Meredith Gran. Speaking of MatSQ, Ms Gran wants you to know:

  oh hell yeah, @badmachinery is doing some Marceline covers! featuring a first look at the Scream Queens: http://boompen.tumblr.com/post/25886238899/hey-dudes-its-shannon-with-freakin-exciting

  For those that don’t know, @badmachinery would be webcomicker extraordinaire and gentleman, John Allison; and more than just a guest cover, he’s doing variant covers for all six issues, which would surely be snatched up at your local comic shop as soon as they hit. This has led to something I haven’t seen a comics publisher do previously³: rather than have violence break out, the Allison covers will be available by subscription only. Single issue here, set of six here.

• Finally, as a combo platter of something I noticed on twitter, and later via comment from the man himself, Ryan Estrada is in fact dropping more comics on us:
  

  Oh, hey how about ONE MORE EARLY MORNING SECRET? http://twitpic.com/a0o9vv #nowwithoscarnominee

  That would be a second shared-setting story anthology, featuring creators justly renowned far and wide. Guys, I’m having to add a sentence so I can link everybody, and I’m pretty sure I missed some. He’s even got the freakin’ Comics Curmudgeon in there!

  And to clarify yesterday’s post, I should have said that I suspected the image of The Kind You Don’t Take Home To Mother meant a full-length treatment of that story, not just a print version of the existing story, which is pretty much what Estrada told us.

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¹ Okay, I may have predicted a factor of twelve and a half, but close enough.

² This is not hyperbole; the done-in-one story was exquisite, easily the best that Ryan North (Nexus of All Webcomics And Also Print Comics Realities, Canadian Directorate) has done so far, and had me snerking out loud during my train ride home from work.

³ By which, I don’t mean, “offer a variant cover for more money than the usual”; there are comics publishers that seemingly make rent money each month by doing nothing but that. What I meant was, in my limited experience (having never worked for a comics publisher, distributor, or retailer), the variant-covers-at-markup normally seem to be pitched to the stores, sometimes requiring the shop to order a specific (large) number of copies in order to be able to also obtain the variant. By contrast, this is pitched to the actual readers.

In case anybody’s wondering, yes — volunteering as an EMT is incredibly satisfying when you help somebody that is in distress and they’re appreciative. But when trauma patients end up in tough spaces that require a lot of bent-over lifting/moving, your back really hates you the next day.

• Just in time for me to not have to do analyses any longer, Zach Weinersmith launches his Kickstarter for his new user-driven narrative book, Trial of the Clone. Let’s run down the checklist, shall we?
  • Goal at 150% in 24 hours? Check!
  • History of exceeding goals by truly fantastic amounts? Check!
  • That little special Weinersmith sumthin’¹? Check!

  As previously noted, I read and supplied comment on an earlier version of TotC about two months back, and at the time it was pretty much only missing artwork. It’s a solid, funny, challenging, well-put-together piece of user-driven entertainment, and there are backer levels that will get you a poster which is a flowchart of the entire damn decision tree.

  Oh, and remember that bit about not having to do analyses? Turns out that Kickstarter have launched their own statistics page which makes a lot of the number-crunching that I was doing unnecessary. Glory be! Hat tip to Caleb Goellner at Comics Alliance for noticing the stats page way before I did, and a double hat tip to him for spelling my name correctly. Glory be!

• Speaking of incredibly prolific webcomickers doing stuff (aka: just another day at Fleen), Platonic Ideal of IPWDS Ryan Estrada dropped notice on two such projects. One, what appears to be a cover for a print version of The Kind You Don’t Take Home To Mother, could have been reasonably predicted by Estradaologists. But the other was a complete surprise, as Estrada has apparently teamed up with a stack of prominent creators to create a shared-environment story collection. Veteran Estrada watchers caution the public to remain calm, as several more projects are likely to appear without warning.
• Machine of Death 2 news, as MoD impressario David Malki ! checks in from Finland with the announcement: MoD2² is to be published at SDCC next year by Grand Central Publishing, which is a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group USA, itself a division of Hachette Livre, which in turn is an imprint of Lagardère Publishing, which is (finally!) a division of Lagardère Group. Translation:
  

  [T]he short version is that (1) MOD2 will be released in July 2013; and (2) it will be released by the second largest publisher in the world

  Much has been made about the fact that publishers expect their authors to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of promotions and publicity, so maybe it’s not a bad move to pick up a book made by authors who do that sort of thing every day? Well done Mr Malki !, well done MoD2 contributors, and here’s hoping that none of us waiting for the book go crazy in the twelve months it will take to hit stores.

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¹ For reference, that would be “hilarity”.

² Electric Deathaloo.

Leave us set this foul, wearying stretch of hot weather (presently manifesting as severe thunderstorms complete with flash flooding) behind us, and go to the important business of lounging on the couch. Before we go, however, some few items of note.

• Kel McDonald, if she isn’t careful, is going to end up one of those people that creates more (successful) Kickstarter projects than she backs. I may be indulging in a bit of hyperbole, but with her second project of the last six months, I can see McDonald as becoming a one-person demonstration of how to leverage crowdfunding; this time, it’s for an 80 page graphic novel, to be posted 10 pages per month to backers, and printed once it’s all done.

  I saw some commentary in the past day or so that Kickstarts to print work already done were more likely to succeed than Kickstarts to fund the production of work not yet begun; in most cases, I think I’d agree, because the potential backer is being asked to support an unknown quantity. In McDonald’s case — there’s plenty of evidence of the work she’s done already, and a track record to judge the likelihood of making good on this project — I think that the caution will be rightly trumped by those that just want to see what she can put together over the next year or so.

• Ryan Estrada had a dream about being put in charge of comics (at least, the portion of them produced by DC), and he laid it all out for you on Tumblr. Not knowing the vagaries of monthly¹ print comic production, and not having bought any ongoing titles from DC in several years, I’m not sure how well Estrada’s REM-shaped plan would work. But dang if I wouldn’t like to see what Dean Trippe and Jerzy Drozd could do with a DC all-ages line, with Lois Lane, Girl Reporter at the top of the list.
• New website design, got it. Lots of those occur on a fairly regular basis, but I’m pointing you towards one that launched today because Ross Nover took the time to explain why The System now looks the way it does, and why it makes for a better experience for the reader. I’m pretty much a sucker for high-functionality, seamless-experience design², so if my pointing you towards Nover’s manifesto gets people thinking about this sort of stuff, mission accomplished.

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¹ Except to say that big companies often can’t seem to get monthly books out monthly.

² The exemplar of which I hold to be Irregular Webcomic, and I’ll fight any man-jack of you says different.

It is so hot out today, rumor has it, Aaron Diaz has been seen wearing a suit with only two pieces. Two pieces.

Man, Johnny always made those jokes look so easy. Regardless, it is hot as balls today (so don’t trip on them), and I am going to point you at some things and then go back to thinking cool thoughts.

• I realize that AnthroCon isn’t on the regular circuit for a lot of webcomickers¹, but Ursula Vernon goes every year (for somewhat obvious reasons), and she did a nice post-mortem on her experiences in the dealer’s room. What struck me is her finding that prints are doing poorly for her, and I was wondering if other creators have found the same to be true. I’ve always had the impression that prints are a low-cost, high-profit item, and sincerely hope this isn’t a trend. Maybe fursuit gloves lack the manual dexterity to carry a print flat without crinkling it?
• Sighted at the venerable (and webcomics-supporting) Midtown Comics in New York City: an announcement of a signing at their downtown location in the evening of 5 July by Our Valued Customers creator “Mr Tim” Chamberlain. All the details are here, save for the bit on the flyer that notes it would be very nice of you to actually buy something from Chamberlain in exchange for his time².
• Mark your calendars: TCAF 2013 dates set for 11 and 12 May, at the TRL as usual. The exhibitor application process starts 1 August, so start getting your credentials together.
• Speaking of really well-run shows and information well in advance, the Programming/floor maps for SDCC not up yet³, but there’s one to put in your calendar in ink: how does a sneak peek at the comics documentary STRIPPED sound?
  

  STRIPPED will be giving a special panel presentation Friday night, July 13th, from 7-8PM, in the combined rooms “25ABC”. Directors Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellett, and Editor Ben Waters will be talking about the film: How the project got started, the highs and lows of the process, and our hopes for where it ends up.

  Make a note! And can anybody tell me how to get ink off my Android screen?

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¹ Although I’d love to see how R Stevens might fare there.

² I’m not saying that if you came to the signing and monopolized his time and didn’t buy anything that you would necessarily show up in the strip; I am saying that you’d probably deserve it, though.

³ Is it me, or is this cutting it a lot closer than normal? Preview Night launches in less than 20.25 days.