Having mentioned this year’s iteration of the Wondermark Calendar last week, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a new twist that David Malki ! is introducing for 2012. Namely, custom holidays.

“Custom” might actually be too strong a word; it’s not like every purchaser is going to get their own combination of unique holidays on the calendar cards. But he is soliciting for suggestions of new holidays to be enshrined for the next twelvemonth:

[Suggested holidays] should:

• Be short
• Be funny
• Include a brief explanation that I’ll archive here on the site for people to consult throughout the year.

EXAMPLE:

January 5, Poop-on-Cats-Day. This is when everybody gets back at their cats by holding them down and pooping on them. Traditionally followed by January 6, Wash-Your-Cats-Day, and January 7, Hospital Day.

Suggestions from the field include, as of this writing,

July 20: The Feast of St. Owens. In honour of Richard Owens, coiner of the term ‘Dinosaur’, every young child is encouraged to carry a small replica of a Dinosaur with them at all times. The feast is concluded in the traditional manner of Owens himself –- scooping out your enemy’s spine and keeping it in a jar in your office.

June 12: Death by Tentacles Day. In memoriam of all the intrepid sailors, airship captains, sailboats and Japanese anime girls viciously violated and slain by oversized octupi, mutant cuttlefish and alien cephalopod-like creatures.

Also, nice try person who suggested 30 July as Defenestration Day, but if you’re going to use it to commemorate the date of the First Defenestration of Prague¹, what about the Second Defenestration of Prague², which took place on 23 May? Or even the One-and-a-Halfth on 24 September³? I suggest a compromise, equidistant between the Spring and Autumn Defenestrations, which would be 24 July; this has the added bonus of likely falling during San Diego Comic Con most years, allowing a mechanism to thin the crowds a bit for at least one day.

• New Johnny Wander book! Volume 2 is now available for your ordering pleasure, although to make delivery before Christmas exponentially more likely, personalizations will not be offered at this time. Buy a copy and bring it to the Yuko half of Yuko-and-Ananth at a con! Or wait until January! In the interests of full disclosure, one must note that a certain hack webcomics pseudojournalist was asked to provide a back cover blurb and did so.
• Tangentially webcomics: anybody out there reading Drops of God? Is it just me, or does plucky heroine Miyabi Shinohara somewhat resemble an all-grown-up Kat Donlan? And is this just an excuse for me to mention that holy crap, Gunnerkrigg Court has been killing it this week? Yes, yes it is.
• Continuing through much of this morning, Jim Zubkavich has been relating the story on Twitter of a Russian comics pirate that emailed him to ask if it would be possible to get unlettered copies of the Skullkickers art, so that he (the pirate) could translate them into Russian and release them to sharing sites more easily.

  I’ll wait while you digest that.

  A back and forth with Cameron Stewart and Indigo Kelleigh ensued on the merits of cooperating with this situation. There’s no Russian-language version of Skullkickers, nor plans to make one; there’s no legal means for this guy to obtain the comics in Russian; they’re already torrented and that will continue regardless of what Zub decides.

  On the other hand, this may create an easement or set a precedent for bad situations down the line. Honestly, just go follow the whole thread because it’s fascinating, and a conversation that is likely to come up more frequently in the future. And then take a look at Chip Zdarsky’s proposed solution:

  @Zubkavich @cameronmstewart I would fly to Russia and shoot him a lot and say “permission granted.”

  And with that, have a good weekend.

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¹ 1419 CE, precipitating the Hussite Wars.

² 1618 CE, precipitating the Thirty Years’ War.

³ 1483 CE, not precipitating any particular war.

Today I am stuck at the mercy of people with no sense of “agreed upon starting time”. On the one hand, there is very little that’s more guaranteed to annoy me than wasting my precious few remaining heartbeats because you can’t be bothered to show up. On the other hand, I have network access and webcomics willing to entertain me. What wonders might quell my murderous rage?

• There’s an excellent appreciation of everybody’s favorite character-driven webcomic, Octopus Pie (by everybody’s favorite Brooklynian, Meredith Gran) over at Comics Alliance today; Lauren Davis (seen spreading comicky wisdoms in places both high and low) is closer to Gran’s age cohort than I am, and has some insights that have always escaped me in my readings of OctoPie. I love finding a completely new perspective on something I’ve followed for a long time; given that Gran’s been releasing Eve and Hanna’s stories for more than four and a half years, finding new nuances is a real thrill.
• Readers of this page know that if there’s one thing I adore with all my heart, it’s The Abominable Charles Christopher; Karl Kerschl has poured all of his considerable skill into his epic tale of a silent ape-man for four and a half years. With Chapter Two just finished, Kerschl’s busy deciding precisely which heart-strings to tug and funny bones to tickle among his audience, and he’s filling the time with guest strips. He could scarcely have gotten a better launch strip for Guest Times than yesterday’s marvel from Yuko-and-Ananth¹, taking us back to our favorite woodland shrink for a rousing game of Dungeons and Nonviolent Interpersonal Conflict Resolution.
• Visual sighting and pre- (pre-?) order announcement on the long-awaited Choo-Choo Bear plush from the mind of Randy Milholland and the business empire of the unsighted mustelid. It’ll probably be some time next week before the (pre-?) orders go live, but more than likely they will be somewhere in the vicinity of here². From Milholland’s Tumblennouncement of the plush’s imminence:
  

  I am really, really excited right now. I’ve wanted a Choo-Choo plush to exist for about four, five years.

  Huh. That’s about … four and a half years?

• Perhaps filled with great resolve after yesterday’s Boxing Day panorama of Brownness, Box Brown announced availability of the first collected volume of Everything Dies. Given that not all of the individual ED issues are still available, and that those that are will run you $5 for 32 — 48 pages of story, the $17 that The Great Disappointment will set you back for more than 200 pages may just qualify it as the bargain of the year. Heck, this collection of beginner’s eschatology³ might be the bargain of the past four and a half years.

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¹ Notionally two separate people, but many who have met “them” in person will swear that they are in fact one hive mind, so cleanly integrated are their artistic sensibilities.

² Countdown to the first person to do something rude with a Choo-Choo Bear plush and a McPedro plush starts … now.

³ Look it up.

Funny, I thought Boxing Day wasn’t for another three and a half weeks.

• For starters, the mad publishing project that is Box Brown’s Retrofit Comics has a group signing/release party at Jim Hanley’s Universe in Midtown Manhattan on Friday¹, from 6:00-8:00pm.
• Across the river, the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival has its one-day run on Saturday² in (surprise) Brooklyn, from noonish to nineish, depending on location. You’ll find various members of the Pizza Island there, along with Retrofit (again), ACT-I-VATE, and more debuts than you can shake a stick at.
• Also on Saturday² and running through Sunday³, Gallery Nucleus in The Greater LA Metroplex launches its latest Brandon Bird-inspired/curated show (with co-curator Julia Vickerman), The JP Show. It’s inspired by all of the humans from the Jurassic Park movies, and seems to lean pretty heavy on the Goldblum (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The exhibit reception starts at 6:00pm (West Coast hours), so if you can travel infinitely quickly, you can attend both BCGF and TJPS; contributors include Carly Monardo, Chris Hastings, and — dang, again? — Box Brown.
• In case that bicoastal flurry of Boxness hasn’t completely drained your cash and energy, the following weekend⁴ marks the latest Webcomics Rampage in the Jewel of Texas, Austin. Times for open interaction with creators are slightly undefined, but specific panels will take place at 6:00pm and 8:00pm Saturday and 10:00am, noon, and 8:00pm Sunday — register for one panel (and one only) by phone: +1 512 454.2399.

  Creators scheduled include out-of-staters Danielle Corsetto, Jeph Jacques, David Willis, and the rarely-seen-in-the-wild Nicholas Gurewitch; proud⁵ Texans include Bill Williams, Joel Watson, Randy Milholland, Rob Den Blyker, and Josh Lesnick. Curiously, no Box Brown connection can be found for this show, possibly bringing to an end his utter domination of webcomic-friendly events for the month of December.

  Then again, there’s still weeks to go before January rolls around.

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¹ 2 December, 2011.

² 3 December, 2011.

³ 4 December, 2011.

⁴ 11-12 December, 2011.

⁵ Undoubtedly, there are varying degrees of pride.

Got invited to be part of something potentially very cool in the 2012 timeframe; can’t wait to see how it might come to fruition. In the meantime, we have a plethora of wondrous things to share today.

• Not webcomics, don’t care — you can now get a print of John Hodgman, Deranged Millionaire and occasional arbiter of disputes. I am bringing this to your attention because it lets me share the fun fact that I played a small part in Hodgman’s efforts to obtain the ferret skeleton in that video. The dead animal supply company I pointed him towards supplied the ferret skeleton in the Ferret Skeleton Room¹. This print is officially Today’s Coolest Thing.
• No, wait, this is: the new Ryan North-penned Adventure Time comic (referenced here) will have one of the covers for its premiere issue done by Becky Dreistadt of Tiny Kitten Teeth. It’s actually become a bit of a misnomer to describe Becky as “of Tiny Kitten Teeth”, as her schedule is increasingly filled with other projects. On the one hand, less TKT and Tigerbuttah; on the other hand, she’s becoming in-demand for her prodigious skills, and it’s just a matter of time before she’s snapped up by some channel or other and put in charge of a string of highly successful animation projects. As much as we in webcomicdom know and love her work, her career is just now starting and I couldn’t be more thrilled for all of her future fame and renown.
• No, wait, maybe this is: just about four weeks in, Child’s Play ’11 is up over the US$1 million mark, which puts the collective effort since 2003 at over $US10 million. And there’s still most of a month and the always massively productive charity dinner/auction to go. Those numbers boggle the mind and humble me; I’m proud to have been a tiny fraction of that effort each year.

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¹ Hooray for helping.

So you’ve got Post-Thankful Fatigue Syndrome? Welling up with all the rage that only a holiday-season trip to the vicinity of The Mall can instill? Just be glad that you’ve got it easier that Arthur, King of Time and Space creator Paul Gadzikowski, who had cause to tweet in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day:

In the hospital with a heart attack. Not gonna die. More later.

Gadzikowski was able to provide more information about ten hours later, and as these things go, it turned out about as well as could be hoped for:

Had a heart attack Wednesday night. Caught it fast so effects are minimal, but it’s still a lifechanger.

Looks like I’m getting sprung from here today [Friday 25 Nov]. Not going back to work till December 5 at the earliest.

Being a webcomicker, Gadzikowski had his eye on the important priorities:

One thing this spate of adversity has taught me: keep your webcomic on a buffer.

The uncharitable might note that AKOTAS has been on a sketch-based story hiatus since the vicinity of the summer solstice, but look at that archive: updates every damn day, up to and after the infarction. I call that dedication and we at Fleen salute Gadzikowski and wish him a speedy return to normal life.

Let’s consider some things that would melt the icy displeasure of even the most PTFS-afflicated among us:

• Rosemary Mosco, who put a lot of her comicking on hold while she went to grad school, got married, little things like that, has put together an awesome print of birdsong mnemonics; hang next to her love letter to turkey vultures and her paleological/alphabetical primer. And, because today is Cyber Monday, don’t forget the TopatoCo secret cybercode.
• Continuing their trend of being supportive with cold, hard cash, the SMBC Theater Superpals have cleared the pre-order hurdle for SMBC DVD 2¹ in two days. As these are the same fans that utterly obliterated the Kickstarter goal for the new space-themed webseries, it shouldn’t be surprising that they collectively came up with two grand in a couple of days, but this was during the Thanksgiving Day craziness, with the family, and the traveling, and the pie-induced coma. So, well done, Superpals.
• Speaking of Kickstarterings launched over the Thanksgiving weekend (when nobody’s paying attention, so perhaps this slipped by you): Audra Ann Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga did so to launch their latest nemu*nemu collection in perfect-bound full color. This one has gotten off to a slow start, which can only be explained by the general away-from-the-internet tendencies of the long weekend. Think of this book as not only entertainment, but a vaccination against dangerously infective cuteness.

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¹ Electric Jamesaloo.

Achewood is back from hiatus. Release the doves and declare a national day of thanksgiving.

NB: If you just go to the main Achewood page, it still shows a random update from the past, although the note at the top does indicate the hiatus is over. Direct link to the new goodnes: here.

Following up from yesterday — you can see the full Q interview with Kate Beaton at the CBC’s website. It’s really good.

• I was wondering why xkcd was late in posting yesterday — Randall Munroe was off on one of his enormous ass-images, this one explaining money. Seriously, almost everything you wanted to know about money, debt, taxes, expenditures is in one zoomable image¹. To make it easier to consider, said ass-image is in the xkcd store as a poster — or even better, as four posters that can be tiled together.

  This might be the most useful and informative image that Monroe’s ever done, even moreso than the radiation dose chart. Go spend an hour staring into the strange world of money, spend another two hours learning about The Giant Pool of Money, and you’ll be better informed than almost everybody you know².

• At the far opposite end of the spectrum from the Enormous Ass-Piles of Money, you have individual creators making things out of their brains and — to varying degrees — with their own hands. From David Malki ! (taking a rare moment of respite from all of his Machine of Death project-noodling) comes the latest iteration of the Wondermark calendar.

  It’s screenprinted by hand on lovely, thick paper and really reminds you what the product of limited-run, artisinal effort is like. I almost missed out on last year’s offering, but Malki ! emailed me personally to let me know he’d hold one against my order in case I’d overlooked it (which I had). NO such danger this year — my order’s already in.

• Not quite so done-directly-by-the-artist, but just as authentic an expression of individual vision: Evan Dahm is Kickstartering the one-volume edition of Order of Tales; he’s more than 35% along in his 30 day campaign since yesterday, so it’s a pretty sure thing that he’s going to make goal (with massive over-goal achievement meaning that many more copies of a really big book underfoot at Dahm’s apartment until they can get mailed out).

  The only variable is how many people will indicate that they definitely want the hardcover super-duper edition of OoT as opposed to the softcover merely-duper edition. My guess is that both editions will feature the promised foreword by living comics legend (and guy who knows about one-volume editions) Jeff Smith.

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¹ Okay, fine, he doesn’t go into the technical definitions of types of money like M1 and M2, but unless you’re my sophomore-year mandatory economics class, you probably don’t care.

² You’ll probably also change at least one of your cherished opinions along the way.

Our Canadian friends (aka the Politest Conquerors) took care of Thanksgiving six weeks ago, on a Monday, and then got back to work. We from Down South will eat ourselves into a coma and take off Friday. What difference could one day’s productivity make?

• Answer #1: You could get to meet Mister The Frog, like Kate Beaton did. All those who are blind envious may now raise their hands or flippers or whatever. Me, I’m not, because me ‘n’ Kermit, we hang out all the time. In fact, here he is just chillin’ with my dog. Yep, totally not incredibly envious after watching the full-length interview (presumably, a full interview with Beaton will be posted soon).
• Answer #2: You could get to write the comic book adaptation of Adventure Time as Ryan North is apparently doing now. Again, not blind envious that North chose to share the news first with Comics Alliance on account of the fact that I am, to date, the sole comics-related sort-of journalist who’s been given the full scoop on the secret code embedded into his Dinosaur Comics books. Yep, no problems here.

  Additionally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that one of the artists on the Adventure Time comic will be Braden Lamb, artist of the unfortunately-hiatused Kitty Hawk, which I hell of enjoyed back when it was still updating. I think Finn and Jake (and dare I hope, Fionna and Cake?) are in good hands.

• Anniversary time! As far as I know, Randy Milholland is not Canadian¹ despite his thorough documentation of Canada’s most dangerous wildlife. He has, on the other hand, been at this webcomics game for a long time, having passed the ten year mark and who knows how many comics²this past weekend.

  It’s been a long time since he lobbed an abortion joke in his very first strip, but nobody can say that Milholland wasn’t in it for the long haul. Per the blogposting on today’s update, as early as the first appearance of Choo-Choo Bear, scarcely a month into Something*Positive’s run, he was planning out what to do with the pudding cat in Year Five.

  Also, nobody can dispute that Milholland is the master of finding ways to let characters (even the most unlikeable) be complete people, none of them entirely perfect (ha!) or despicable, and allowing them to mature and change in organic, realistic ways. For all the grumptacular facade he puts up, he, more than any other webcomics creator³, understands the possibilities of redemption and wanting to grow as a person, no matter how hard it is at times (or how easy it is to put up barriers and walls).

  Even given all the bluster and dickery and awfulness that Milholland’s cast unleashes on each other, they all aspire on some level to be better. The name of the strip may have been intended as awful and cynical and ironic, but it’s become something that one can read and find legitimately optimistic. Bravo, and happy stripaversary, beardy-man.

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¹ One could argue that, being a Texan, Milholland is genetically predisposed towards the opposite of Canadianess. However, I can state from personal experience that he doesn’t fit the stereotypical mold of Texaness either, so perhaps he’s got some recessive Canadian genes.

² I could count the number of updates on his various archive pages, but aside from the question as to whether or not to count his side projects like New Gold Dream or Midnight Macabre, there’s a hell of a lot of them and thus I’m not going to. Deal.

³ Possible exception: Tatsuya Ishida.

And next week — what with the big American holiday and all — isn’t looking much better. So how about I remind you that you have four weeks from tomorrow to get ready for 2011’s Feel Free To Talk To Me If I’m Wearing A Dinosaur Comics Shirt Day; from FFTTTMIIWADCSD [Facebook account required] declarer Ryan North¹:

If you’re single and you’d like to meet someone who maybe reads the same comic as you, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. If you’ve got one of [Ryan’s] shirts, wear it, and if you don’t have one, you can keep an eye out for someone who does! And if something awesome does happen, please email [Ryan] about it: it’d be totally amazing if everything works out.

Okay, so the problem is – what if you’re happily in a monogamous relationship or if you’re NOT looking for anyone or whatever? You can not wear your shirt on the special day, or if you do, you can politely let folks down easy as I’m sure you’re used to doing, and I say this because every reader of my comic I’ve ever met is attractive. Not even a joke there. It’s kinda crazy.

And please note that this is not “Feel Free To Be Totally Creepy Around Me, That’s Awesome Day”. This is just a day where [a] small group of clothing articles has been semantically overloaded for a self-selected group of people to say “Hey, talking to strangers can be hard, but here’s your opening, and here’s maybe a hint that I’m not against meeting someone new.”

So there’s that to look forward to. Also, pie. Mmmm, pie.

Edited to fix header image and also because how the hell did I miss Penny Arcade turning 13 years old today? You’re a frickin’ genius, Gary.
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¹ Man-Moutain, Nexus of all Webcomics, yeah, yeah … not feeling the nicknames today. Sorry.

Yeah, so the Washington Post is doing that “Best Webcomic” poll thingy again (cf: last year’s version). I remain deeply ambivalent because it’s asking for categorization based on physical format — webcomic, comic strip (presumably newspaper, although most webcomics are strips), “graphical narratives” (I think that means graphic novels, or maybe comic books?) and animated film. So because of choice of distribution medium, webcomics are all comparable?

Think about this for a moment: comparing (say) Bucko against Family Man (which are produced in the same room, from adjacent drawing tables) makes about as much sense as comparing (say) Roger Langridge’s The Muppet Show Comic Book against Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose¹ because they’re both printed in color with floppy covers and staples up the middle.

So webcomics are all webcomics? Fine. I’m nominating Oglaf, SS Myra, and Get Fucked²; at least they’re more comparable than other comics would be to each other. Let’s see if WaPo acknowleges ’em.

• Speaking of Charles Christopher³, a double-size update dropped, along with this note:
  

  See you next week, for the exciting conclusion of Chapter 2!
  -karl

  Given that a chapter means the possibility of a new book, I’m all excited. Oh, heck, I was already excited because Luga showed up again last week, bringing to an end my worry and fretting of more than a month. The wheels of Luga’s justice may grind slowly, but I think in the end both the Chief and Sissi Skunk will have cause to regret their misdeeds.

• Following up from yesterday — the Bradster and the G-Man have revealed their collaboration at the ECCC site, in the form of a weekly gag strip about comic convention goings-on, out front on the floor, in the planning and backstage process, and the inevitable bar circuit. More from Guigar at his blog, but for me the most telling part was his explanation about a key piece of logic — this strip, if done well, will give people a reason to come back to the ECCC website all year round, and not just when they’re specifically gearing up to attend.

  The next EmCity Con isn’t until the end of March, and possibly only the hardest core of attendees are paying much attention to the daily announcements this far out … until now? That’s a lot to ask of a new webcomic, even from two established creators with built-in audiences, but it’s going to be one hell of an interesting experiment, one that I think will be repeated elsewhere in the coming years.

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¹ In the former case, the comic made me laugh; in the latter, the reviews.

² If I felt like doing more than just making a point, I’d have to go with Vattu, The Abmoninable Charles Christopher, and Octopus Pie, which are all character-driven, chapter-oriented, longform stories, and absolutely killing it, each update.

³ I was so, right there, in footnote #2; you think I write these for my amusement? Well, that’s where you’re right.