Nearly halfway through, and my first read on the Skin Horse 3 Kickstart is largely holding true — nearly 60% of all pledgers are holding at the $20 level, which remains the quantum unit of money. In another month after the campaign closes (and perhaps just after NCS weekend¹, where I may have a chance to talk to Shaenon Garrity about it) I’ll be very interested to look at the final distribution, particularly given the inclusion of one item that I’d previously disregarded in Kickstarter analyses: the unlocked reward. My Grand Unified Kickstarter Theory is moving ever-further away from completion.

Oh, and in the interests of complete disclosure, I am quoted² on the Kickstarter page, but I’ve had no communication with the creators of Skin Horse and my thoughts here have not been influenced by any offers or promises. Although I am very glad to see that Ms Garrity has chosen an appropriate funding level for giving away original art; in the past (if my memory serves me correctly), originals have been thrown in at purchase points as low as US$50 which is just crazypants.

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¹ Did I mention that the NCS have graciously offered me the opportunity to attend their get-together so I can see who actually wins the first division award for webcomickry? They did, and for the same cost as members, which was quite kind. Gonna be an expensive weekend (not to mention that it’s Las Vegas), but it’s something I figure I ought to do once.

² At least I think I am — those words sound like something I’d write, but this Gary Tyrell fellow that’s quoted spells his last name wrong.

With no Axe Cop on TV-type announcements today, all is quiet in advance of what strikes me as a fairly unprecedented situation: there are three separate, established, legitimate conventions happening this weekend, at opposite corners of the continent: Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo, MoCCA Festival, and Stumptown Comics Fest

While the overlap between Calgary¹ and the other two² is theoretically small, there’s a significant draw to the great northern prairies of webcomics talent, many of whom were seen in Manhattan or Portland in other years. There was talk when the Stumptown/MoCCA date conflict was discovered about which way the small creators would go³, but I don’t think the Canadian Factor was recognized at the time. I doubt any one of the shows will be damaged, but it’ll be interesting to see if any of the creators continue to opt away from one or more of the contenders in the future even if they occur at different times.

Meanwhile, if you’re heading to Calgary (or the following weekend to Toronto for TCAF) to see the TopatoCo Vendatorium, please be aware:

A note to TCAF/CALGARY friends, due to Problems we won’t be bringing SHIRTS to either show. We will however have Special Coupon Codes.

Very diplomatically put, but if I had to guess, I’d say that Problems is code for Customs screwed us.

Having traveled to other countries for work on occasion, I can tell you there’s a special stab of fear that hits when you realize that the customs/immigration/whatever official in front of you has that gleam in the eye that subtly communicates one thought at you: I don’t care whatever national policy and/or international treaties might say … in this lane, I am the merciless god of your existence, and I am feeling smitey today. No matter how often you may have sailed through border bureaucracy in the past, today is going to be different, and there’s nothing you can do but smile and nod and say thank you to the person who is casually ruining your day⁴.

Regardless of the reason (and I am going merely on supposition here), it appears that Commerce and Trade will still take place, and you will be able to get your wares, be they present physically or not. And hey — not having to unpack all that stock and pack up the remainder at the end of the show has to be somewhat positive? Yeah, okay, I’m sure the TopatoCo folks would rather have the actual shirts, but lemons and lemonade. If you see them at either show, give them all my best.

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¹ Calgary is taking the “and Entertainment” aspect seriously, what with booking all manner of TV and movie personages, including all the regular cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation for Cochrane’s sake.

² Both MoCCA and Stumptown focus on smaller, creator-owned/indy-type comics.

³ Reminiscent of the great East Side/West Side webcomics battles of the early Naughts.

⁴ To the many Canadian border personnel I have interacted with in the past: all but one of you have been wonderful. The other one? I prefer to think she was having a bad breakup that day. In any event, the Big Scary Event I had at Customs was in February 1991 on my return from Canada, and I’ve done work gigs for Customs Canada, so we’re cool.

I was stuck, I mean really stuck for news on account of nothing was happening today, then 9:30 LA time rolled around and here are four words for you to consider

Axe Cop TV Show.

Brief version: Fox is doing late-night Saturday shows, in 15 minute segments, headed up by a former Adult Swim executive. Slightly longer version: nothing happens until next year, and there’s still three other program slots to fill before this makes it to air. And in the vein of wild speculation, I’m guessing that Los Bros Nicolle won’t be getting “never have to work again” money off of this, but I’m equally guessing that Malachai gets to attend college without a couple of decades of student loans to pay back.

Let’s hope that between now and then, the world doesn’t beat his creativity into submission; I imagine it’s easier to disregard somebody that says your daydreaming will never amount to anything when you’ve got a DVD screener that says otherwise.

That would be International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, naturally. Why is 23 April International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day? Because Internet Jesus said so¹, that’s why, which immediately prompted multiple people to ask him to repurpose his free-to-free, nearly 900 page complete webcomic (Freakangels, which is so damn good I bought it on paper) into PDF for their convenience. When Charlie Brown wails to the heavens wondering if anybody can tell him what IPSTD is all about, paraphrase the Gospel of Luke to be all about entitlement.

By contrast, when somebody gives me something from the world of webcomickry entirely free, I’m going to be grateful, especially when it means easy content. For instance, Darren J Gendron, (or “Dern”, for short) went and did all the hard work in tracking down the latest scraper and dropped it all in my lap, here to share with you. “Quite Comical”² had a site and everything when I looked in yesterday, but now appears to be a parked page with no real content.

Before it disappeared, though, it featured a link whereby creators whose content was scraped could fill out a form to request to Please, sir, could I opt out? and the coder would deign to consider it. I also found a reference over the weekend to Quite Comical being part of a coding competition, the second rule of which was not to infringe on anybody’s rights.

I can’t make this stuff up, folks. But, as I mentioned, the Quite Comical page is well and truly content-free, so we can infer that the creators have abandoned this latest, clumsy attempt at asking forgiveness rather than permission. It’s also an inference that David Willis is unimpressed by the “But I let you opt out, eventually!” argument, enough so that he was still annoyed this morning. Once again, for anybody that’s considering a comic-harvesting app:

• Linking directly to creator’s images and stealing their bandwidth: not okay
• Stripping their comics from their RSS feeds and removing accompanying blogposts or ads: not okay
• Stripping their comics from their sites and removing accompanying blogposts or ads: not okay
• Assuming they want to be part of your business venture: not okay
• Deciding unilaterally what copyright privileges creators are entitled to: astonishingly, stupendously not okay

Continuing in the vein of doing things for my benefit: Jennie Breeden has helpfully mapped out a bunch of webcomics people and where to find them at next weekend’s Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, which is helpfully found here. Using that as the landmark for the show floor, there are a bunch of additional webcomics folks that will be found on the wide-open prairie, including (but not limited to) the Blind Ferret crew (booths 925/1025), Angela Melick³ (boothing with Danielle Corsetto at 1125), a healthy contingent from TopatoCo (Kate Beaton, Christopher Hastings, Jeph Jacques, and David Malki !, all at booth 922), Scott C (table K05), Andy Runton (table K09), and Jim Zub (at the very futuristic-sounding table X17).

On Breeden’s map, stand at the Sam & Fuzzy table and look to the top of the screen, you’ll see TopatoCo; likewise, stand at the Girls With Slingshots table and look Due Up, and you’ll be staring at Blind Ferret. For those that want to see how it all arranges itself on the convention center floor, the official map is here [PDF].

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¹ IPSTD actually has an origin independent of Mr Ellis, but he’s the one that could kick me in the head so hard I fly across the room and explode, so I’m going to cite him as the reason I’m an adherent and hope he doesn’t kick me. I hate exploding.

² In accordance with long-standing blog policy, people that piss me off will get talked about, but no links. In this case, it doesn’t matter, as the paragraph above should make clear.

³ If you see Jam, throw her a right-hand rule for me.

My brain’s all over the place today. It started when I saw that my alma mater had announced one of the modern world’s greatest engineers, Dean Kamen, as commencement speaker. It’s hard to imagine a better match, and the video¹ of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s president making the announcement was clever and funny. A few hours later, an announcement was made that the same man (who had shepherded the Rose-Hulman back from a couple of directionless years) had collapsed and died.

I never met President Matt Branam, but he did impressive things in the various stages of his career and had an open-door, first-name basis with the student body. I have no doubt he was as indispensable to the current students of Rose-Hulman as President Sam Hulbert was when I studied there. My best wishes to President Branam’s family and friends.

Briefly, then, as my heart’s not entirely in it:

• MoCCA Festival returns to the Lexington Armory next weekend, with lots of webcomics people exhibiting and/or panelling.
• I think a lot of us think that Cucumber Quest was one of the most impressive webcomic debuts of the past year, and not creator Gigi DG is ready to print up the first two chapters. Requisite Kickstarter over here, off to a damn good start².
• Scott Kurtz is back from the Far Antipodes and dropping some opinion about Mark Waid’s announcement of a new webcomics-model³ portal called Thrillbent. Kurtz thinks that the entry of a big-name print-comics-books creator like Waid into webcomics offers the possibility of a threat to existing webcomickers if other big names follow. I’m not so sure; Kurtz follows print comics much closer than a lot of us, I suspect — I recognize Waid’s name from Kingdom Come, but couldn’t have told you what else he’d worked on in the past ten years — and may be overestimating the degree to which big name may act as a disruptor.

  The key question is, if they start making money/careers out of the webcomics model, are they doing so by cannibalizing the existing spend-on-webcomics audience, or will they be bringing along those that already follow them. To tie it to the last item, how many people that are itching to buy Cucumber Quest in print are eager to give Waid money for his webcomics offerings and vice versa? Right now, I suspect (but hard data from which to draw proper conclusions is years off) there will be some intermingling and peeling-off of audience members, but that for the most part the Venn Diagram of Mr Waid and Ms DG’s readers will hell of look like an eight. There will likely be a few especially broad-minded readers (and I think that Kurtz will be one) sitting in that narrow overlap in the middle. Ask me again in 2017 what’s going to happen in 2014.

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¹ Since pulled.

² As of this writing, more than 100% of goal in the first few hours, and a month to go.

³ That is, give away content on the front end, monetize on the back end.

So today’s Sinfest (following on from yesterday’s, and the ongoing storyline of a zombie looking for story time) really caught my eye because of the last panel and the characterization of elections as a choose-your-own-adventure story writ large. It’s a great metaphor, and it resonates with me because I’ve been reading a CYOA for the past couple of hours.

As people who read his comics or his twitterfeed may have gathered, Zach Weiner is working on a CYOA¹ style story, and he was kind enough to give me a preview of the work in progress. As it’s not due for release for some months, I won’t be discussing specifics here, but I will talk about some generalities:

• It’s hilarious. Despite some gratuitous jokes at the expense of one of my chosen tribes, all is forgiven because Weiner has brought his absurdist take to the tropes of Star Wars, Star Trek, the Hero’s Journey, and porn. In other words, it’s like you’re living inside an SMBC strip while Weiner’s on a particularly creative laugh-generating bender.
• It’s long². I must have made a couple of hundred choices, zig-zagging along a story path so convoluted that the time-honored CYOA trick of deciding you don’t like how your chances look and backtracking two or three choices to start down another path was pretty immediately useless.
• It’s hard³. For those of you that have followed the micro-CYOA doodles at the top and bottom of the pages of Weiner’s SMBC print collection, those are a cakewalk compared to how tricky this one is. In part, it’s because Weiner has inverted a lot of expectations and your best chances to win involve ________ __ __ _____ ___________. But even once you realize that, it’s rarely obvious which choice will do that most effectively.
• It’s damn near complete. It’s still getting polished up with respect to events that aren’t just based on reader choice (like whether or not you win fights), and illustrations (by the great Chris Jones) are still to be added (I can think of at least a dozen scenes where Jones’s work will make hilarious things hilarious squared), but the narrative path is solid and well-designed.

I’m sure that somebody has done serious research on the theoretical structure of CYOA branching paths, and I’m equally certain that this project is better for Weiner’s well-known predilection for self-taught math. The fact that all of that can be combined with a story that includes the concept of “essential _______s”⁶. Price not set yet, but when this debuts at San Diego, it’ll be worth every penny.

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¹ I should probably note that as far as I can tell, various people have copyright on terms like “Choose Your Own Adventure” and “Pick Your Path”, but since terms like “interactive fiction” are so unwieldy, I’m sticking with CYOA as a generic description which is what everybody calls the damn things anyway.

² That’s what she said.

³ Insert⁴ your own joke about “hard” here, it’ll fit right into⁵ the storyline.

⁴ Insert your own joke about “insertion” here.

⁵ Insert your own joke about “fitting right in” … oh, hell, you get the idea. Lotta sophomoric sex jokes, in the very best sense of the term.

⁶ No spoilers, dammit, but it’s a throw-away joke that left me in awe.

Sorry, no unifying theme today, just a bunch of stuff I found to be neat.

• First and foremost, congratulations to Dante Shepherd of Surviving The World, his lovely wife theSwede, and new infant daughter Cannonball. Expect a brief interruption in lecture, meaning the last of Shepherd’s lessons (until guest lecturers take up the slack) will be this fetus-themed installment with one heck of a disturbing facial expression.
• As has become somewhat traditional in recent years among those that do comics in webform as well as print, Dave Kellett has opted to make it easy for Eisner voters to sample the material for which he is nominated in the category of Best Humor Publication. So if you’ve got network, and 24MB of drive space, and a PDF reader (please for the love of Glob, not Adobe Acrobat), point yourself over to here and grab a copy of Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner.

  Those with long memories may recall that Kellett’s previous themed collection, Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953, was nominated in the same category last year, but Coffee is sure to succeed where Literature sadly fell short. This is because Coffee has a secret wow factor, in the form of commentary by me mixed in with the Great Coffee Cup Lid Challenge of Aught-Seven. For truly as it is written, if Fleen be with you, who can stand against you?¹

• Machine of Death 2 details? Yes, please! David Malki ! shares with us all today the titles of the stories contained in MoD 2 (title pending), along with a smattering of the creators that will be doing chapter art and comic strips. There’s even statistics, because if there’s one thing that MoD makes me think of almost as much as the stories, it’s the data². In all, writers in 46 different countries submitted stories², overwhelmingly from the US and Canada.

  Put another way, it’s 1958 stories from 1705 different writers, along with 151 art portfolio submissions from twelve countries. Some of the stories won’t fit in the book, but the Mod Squad have plans for them, never fear. Most interesting to me — even more interesting that the fact that apparently Rebecca Black⁴ has a story in the new collection — is the fact that seven creators (counting Malki ! and fellow editors Ryan North & Matthew Bennardo) are returning from Volume One, so if you liked the first one, this bodes well for you.

• New from TopatoCo, five (count ’em, five) books are slated for Spring release, including new collections of A Softer World, Three Panel Soul, Dinosaur Comics⁵. MS Paint Adeventures⁶, and muthascratchin’ Three. Word. Phrase. My guess is that these will be debuting at TCAF (mostly because last week they announced that they’re debuting at TCAF), possibly along with the must-have con season accessory, delivered in a chariot fit for the gods themselves.

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¹ Don’t answer that.

² Some of you will find it sad that I mean that literally and sincerely — the numbers and behind-the-scenes accounts that Malki !, et. al., have shared with the process of producing MoD material is beyond value.

³ Malki ! claimed 44 countries, but I counted 46. Or 47, if you count Antarctica, which isn’t on the list but totally should be.

⁴ Apparently, she knows all about death.

⁵ Continuing the secret book-title code that I totally know because Ryan told me.

⁶ Specifically, Homestuck, volume 2, which many said couldn’t possible be translated to book form without violating the laws of space and time.

Do me a favor. Check out this page of webcomic honor-system goodie purchasing.

Whoops! Wrong link, that would be the Jonathan Coulton honor-system music recording purchase page; I meant to give you this one instead. That would be Chris Onstad’s new Achewood non-physical goods honor system purchase page. I’ve been kind of wondering when this sort of formalized storefront might make a prominent appearance in webcomics; there are plenty of pay-what-you-want operations primarily for things like wallpaper (viz.: here, here, or here), but those have usually used a “send money and tell me which item you want, I’ll send you stuff” mechanism. This formalized, storefront approach is new (or at least, new to me).

It’s even got the equivalent of the “I already stole it” feature over at JoCo’s page, in that you can buy an open pass for all current content or all current and future content for prices that represent some significant discounts from the nominal list prices. Consider: the current ANPGHSPP features fifteen items prices at US$3, and another six at US$6, for a total declared value of US$81; all of this can be yours for US$25 (approximately a 70% discount), or all of this plus all future content for US$50 (for a discount of 38%, assuming you never download future content⁴).

Given our discussion last week about perceived value and the appeal of a bargain, Onstad appears to have created a mechanism that will encourage people to give him money in exchange for work he’s already done, for essentially zero distribution costs. There is no part of this experiment that doesn’t work to his advantage, and it’s worth closely studying. If this is something that other creators can emulate, I’d suggest they do so.

It’s got to be especially appealing to Onstad given his stated dislike of the merch-fulfillment end of running a webcomic as a business. Achewood currently features a sponsorship page, subscriber-only material, and this ANPGHSPP, but no traditional store where one may exchange money for tangible goods. This is a damn shame as when Onstad was willing to produce tangible goods, there was terrific stuff there; I’m still willing — years later — to exchange money for the fabled and possibly mythical second Achewood Cookbook, but if making such a thing brings him no joy to a degree that would outweigh the benefit of my money, then I’ll have to live without. Finding a balance between creating art (to your own satisfaction as well as your audience’s) and keeping the lights on isn’t ever easy, and if the ANPGHSPP is a balance that Onstad can live with, good on him.

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¹ Or WHSGP for short.

² Or JCHSMRPP if you prefer.

³ Also known as the ANPGHSPP; of course, if you neglect the “A” part, then the JCHSMRPP would also qualify as an NPGHSPP, as downloadable music is an NPG.

⁴ There are presently twelve additional items listed but not yet available on the ANPGHSPP; assuming they each end up going for the lowball price of US$3, that’s US$117 declared value for US$50, or a 57% discount. Undoubtedly, some of those will be priced higher than three bucks, and “anything forever” means more than just the presently-listed twelve future items, making for a significant potential savings.

Yep, Benign Kingdom hardcover, in today’s mail. I also got a copy of Evan Dahm’s individual book in softcover which I might be tempted to give away on account of it’s all in the hardcover, but there’s a place inside for a monster-huge sketch and MoCCA is just two weeks away, so … maybe. Also, the hardcover has a friggin’ ribbon bookmark, an innovation in comics previously seen only in things as nice as the BONE hardcover. What I am basically saying here is that the four creator teams and George kicked at least twelve separate asses in the production of these art books and you should all buy them all. The end.

Except, no, not the end, because — in a spectacular act of lede-burying — I have not yet told you that Meredith Gran will be the latest creator¹ to take a whack at comics dealing with the Land of Ooo, as she produces a new Adventure Time spin-off miniseries starring Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum and their band. Bleeding Cool got the launch story, but Gran has graciously agreed to an interview with me, and we’ll be bringing that to you as soon as her schedule permits.

If you’re paying attention to calendars you might have noticed that yesterday was 15 April, meaning the long-awaited launch of The PhD Movie is now available for you via streaming and optional download.

Don’t use that link, though. Use this one. It takes you to the same movie, the same ability to download, but it does so for 50% off, meaning that you can watch a feature-length movie that Jorge Cham and his cohorts put together with tremendous time and expense for five dollars (American). Seriously, we are into Louis CK territory here, with nothing standing between the creator and the audience but an entirely nominal sum of money.

In the absolute worst case, you don’t enjoy a movie for a couple of hours, it costs you and everybody around you a total of five bucks², and since you’re watching it at home instead of in a theater³, you can get completely drunk while watching if you want. Hell, since an actual theater probably costs like twelve dollars and you have to drive to it, you’re actually saving money to find out you don’t like the movie. Anything less negative than that counts as a triumph, and still only costs a fiver.

And if you totally love it (or know anybody in grad school, who will surely love it), you can get the DVD version for US$17 plus shipping, which is still less than this week’s craptacular Hollywood releases. That’s what they call a win-win-win in the movie biz, so you’d best get jumping if you want your share of the winning.

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¹ I have literally lost track of how many webcomics people have a hand in the Adventure Time comics now, but the list includes Ryan North, Braden Lamb, Scott C, Mike Krahulic, Becky-n-Frank, Elena Barbarich, Emily Carroll, James Kochalka, and Lucy Knisley so far.

² So you get one less 1200 calorie drink at Starbucks this week, which maybe isn’t such a bad idea when you think about it.

³ Adding insult to injury, the theater is probably full of the sort of people that you find in theaters these days — the sort determined to make the moviegoing process as miserable as possible.

So, what are you doing this weekend? Me, I’m watching the countdown timer for the release of Jorge Cham’s The PhD Movie, which now under one day, nine hours, and 30 minutes. Perhaps you are the sort of person that would like to engage the laugh-chuckles that come from recognition of your own graduate studies¹? Alternately, you may be the sort of person who would like to engage in some good old-fashioned Schadenfreude at the expense of your joyless, suffering, gradschool-attending friends². Perhaps you would even like to have these bouts of amusement while simultaneously saving money?

That’s where you’re in luck, Sparky, because The PhD Movie people³ have gifted us with a coupon which is good for 50% off the cost. We’ll be posting that on Monday, so come back then and we’ll give that sumbitch out. Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, Jorge Cham has graciously given me access to a stream of the movie for which I thank him, but I’ll most likely be buying a copy of the DVD anyway on account of I think my niece might need a copy as a late birthday present, to help stave off her own thesis madness. Um, if you’re reading this, ignore that last part, Heather. Thanks.

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¹ In which case, they are probably of the laugh to keep from crying kind.

² That would be the cruel form of laughter. Dick.

³ That is to say, Jorge.