I kid, but Mr Snark was pretty well known for his dislike of infinite canvas — perhaps for the very reason that yesterday’s Octopus Pie update is so likely to not provoke his ire. It’s hard to do infinite canvas well, but when it is, when it’s necessary to get across the idea (as it is here), there’s nothing to match it. Meredith Gran remains at the top of her game, and among the very best comics artists in any channel at expressing the emotional state of her characters. I got chills reading it.

• From the Business of Comics Desk: those creators looking to hop on the Square bandwagon may have a bit of a wait to do so. The mobile-device card-processing solution went and got itself featured on Marketplace last night, which is going to broaden awareness and possibly demand for the phone-dangling card-reading dongles and the cheap merchant services that come with it. While the appeal of Square has been obvious for those that want credit-processing ability outside of traditional storefronts — show vendors and suchlike — I wouldn’t be surprised to see small businesses and restaurants doing some back-of-the-envelope figures to decide if Square wasn’t better than their current merchant account. Hopefully, any scale-up in demand won’t be accompanied by growing pains.
• Everybody remember Neil Cohn? Guy that does research into the perceptual experience of reading comics? It’s time for the latest round of surveys, so head on over The Monkey and let him know what you think. You might win stuff.
• Mysterious tweets indicate that the long-rumored next project from Brad Guigar¹, apparently with the connivance and cooperation of Chris Giarrusso. Here’s what’s obvious: the project will launch tomorrow, on the website of Emerald City Comic Con and both creators have a history of capes-related, all-ages comics. Guess we’ll all find out tomorrow.
• Last thought: proof of how TopatoCo is simultaneously subsidizing mail service in the Pioneer Valley, and also requiring extra manpower on their pickup route. A literal megabuck of postage expenditures in just over four years, and Christmas is still to come.

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¹ Sorry ladies, he’s taken.

Seriously, I marveled at each of these things.

• For starters, can I give some props¹ to Danielle Corsetto? Every 200 strips, like friggin’ clockwork, she cranks out a book. Unlike most print comics, “waiting for the trade” doesn’t involve kicking around for half a year or more before the book becomes available — strip number that’s a multiple of 200 goes up, 10 or so weeks later the book’s solicited². Not only that, but the magic $20 price point is preserved, despite the fact that this book (volume 6, for those of you keeping score) is full color, where previous volumes were black & white.

  Operators are standing by (or would be, if the internet hadn’t destroyed all those operator jobs) to take your orders now. For future reference, this ups my current “must buy” list to … nine items from eight creators. Stop creating things, guys.

• Speaking of black and white becoming color: years ago, before the gag became played out, Greg Dean wondered if making a comic would be a cool thing to do. Twelve years, one marriage, and one offspring later he has his answer: yeah, pretty much. Long time for the internet, twelve years. Long damn time.
• The Machine of Deathiversary may have passed a few weeks back, but the official celebration for MoD turning a year old will take place the day after tomorrow with a blowout party in Los Angeles; with the acceptances for MoD2³ having gone out recently, the MoD Squad are undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief that that particular enormous job is behind them (nearly 2000 submissions and literally millions of words had to be combed through).

  As an extra incentive for those unsure if an evening of uplifting frolic and cavortment are what you had in mind for Thursday, consider this: in addition to fun, in addition to a magic show, there will be fabulous prizes which you could possibly win … if you bring a nonperishable unit of food for the MoD Food Drive. Just … if your MoD card reads ANAPHYLAXIS, maybe you don’t bring a jar of peanut butter?

• Last thoughts: Shelly Winters, absent from public view for more than two years, is not only back in a new adventure, she’s brought along my favorite almost-teen adventure-having schoolgirl, Charlotte. The next eight weeks are going to be magic.

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¹ That’s what you kids say these days, right?

² The pedantic amongst you may note that this collection’s last strip was produced in July. However, note that Corsetto was involved in a store & hosting migration and site redesign in August, which explains the uncharacteristic delay.

³ Electric Deathaloo.

Holy cats, the network is slow today. Granted, I’ve been in various locales for work for the past couple of weeks that had unusually fast network speeds, but this is just painful. I’ll just assume it’s to make up for the fact that it’s a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day for November in New York City, which presumably means the End Times are just around the corner because everybody knows that November is supposed to be pretty dank and miserable. Interesting times, my friends.

• Hopefully, when Ragnarök hits, we’ll all at least have a good idea what the most polite way to steal dwindling foodstocks from our neighbors might be, as Holly Post and Sara McHenry’s new podcast will be able to tell us. With less than a day to go, A Nerd Of Advice slipped over the line and reached its fundraising goal yesterday, ensuring that I’ll be able to leave tasteful thank-you cards on the graves of my enemies in the depths of the fimbulvetr. Well done, Sara and Holly!
• Speaking of Kickstarting, there’s another project to commend to you that launched over the weekend. Kel McDonald is putting together a comics anthology devoted to fairy tales, and if you’ve ever read this page before, you know I loves me some fairy tales. If nothing else, look at that lineup of talent that McDonald’s got arranged, revel in the fact that the chief purpose of this anthology’s fundraising is to pay the contributors, and consider that most of the creators are already putting finishing touches on their efforts. This is not gonna be a project that finishes far off in limbo, and it’s going to be pretty.
• Eventually I’m going to get to the point where the Sunday annotation of David Morgan-Mar¹ has been recommended to you so many times that you just click over there without me telling you it’s worth your time. Monday will come, you’ll be reading Fleen, and like Pavlov’s dog you will automatically click over to Irregular Webcomic².

  This time, it’s advice for anybody that’s ever asked him how to make a webcomic, and it strikes me as significant that a pretty damn successful webcomicker who never had any intention of making money (to the point that there’s not even advertising to offset hosting costs at IW) has largely the same advice that you’d get from somebody who’s made the webcomic his job.

  Apart from the technical advice, Morgan-Mar produces three most-important ideas:

  1. Don’t start a webcomic expecting to make any money. Do it because you want to make comics and will do it even if it takes you time and effort for no reward whatsoever.
  2. More importantly, don’t expect everyone to love your work.
  3. [M]ost importantly of all, decide how often you are going to update your comic and stick to your advertised update schedule. [emphasis original]

  I can’t disagree with any of them.

• I also imagine some day Kate Beaton will stop being noticed by significant media; today’s noticer: The frickin’ Economist, newsweekly of record for the most important people in the world. Yikes.

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¹ PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.

² Or drooling; presumably the drool will cause a short in your keyboard that brings up the IW page.

I hope everybody is having a sufficiently loud 11/11/11.

• I’m a bit behind the curve on this one¹, but the semi-anonymous webcomicker known alternately as Hard or Clay, the twisted genius behind Sexy Losers/The Thin H Line [both as NSFW as can be] has been drawing comics on the subject of depression for the past two months. Much like the recent exploration of how depression feels from the inside at Hyperbole and a Half, Clay’s intent isn’t so much clinical or event-focused as it is tactile — Depression Comix is about point of view, distilled down to four powerful panels at a time.

  It’s startlingly unlike his previous work and worth your time. Those with tendencies towards depression ought to find familiar ground here and hopefully that recognition that they aren’t alone is helpful; those that don’t suffer should find perspective here that will hopefully lead to better recognition and acceptance of how devastating depression can be.

• I hope I’m wrong about this, but Sinfest has had some endgame feeling to it lately — following on the earlier fairly major events surrounding Fyoosh and Lil’ E, Miss Fuchsia has declared her intent openly, Lil’ E is shifting his self-perception, Monique has shifted perspective, Seymour isn’t quite so dogmatic as once and even Big D is deeper than previously suspected.

  All of these changes (dare I say signs of growth) seem to be approaching the state of completely different people, of the sort that traditionally mark the end of stories. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m enjoying the hell out of reading it.

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¹ Thanks to Thilini M (once “Snipergirl” on the old Goats forums, or more properly Doctor Snipergirl these days) for the linking.

I kid, I kid. But surely I’m not the only one that thinks it’s just a matter of time before Kate Beaton becomes the subject of one of those Canadian Heritage minutes?

• Because I happened to be reading his blog, and double-happened to find a link to his old blog, and triple-happened to find his post noting ten years as a web com artist was dated exactly one year ago — happy eleventh anniversary of web com artistry, Kris Straub.

  As long as we’re noting anniversaries, today would be the anniversary of the birth of one of the most talented, funniest, and all-around greatest web com artists, Meredith Gran. Want to know how to succeed in this business? Do like Meredith does and spend 40% of your life honing your craft before you leave your mid-20s. That ought to do it.

• Readers of this page may know that I have great affection for the web com artisting of one Ms K Brooke “Otter” Spangler, creator of A Girl And Her Fed. She takes her time with her story, asks some pretty deep questions, isn’t afraid to revisit plot points from half-a-thousand updates previous, and easily takes the Most Improved Art award¹. But I wanted to mention something that she doesn’t get recognized for so often — her prose. Want to get a feel for how razor sharp her writing is? Check out her expose of how department store cosmetics counter reps deal with competition².

  People that write for comics don’t usually spend words as freely as they might like — the limited real estate afforded to speech balloons and fear of the dreaded Wall O’ Text Syndrome dictate economy as the general rule. As a result, most of them don’t really get the chance to stretch their verbal muscles too often, and thus might not be very skilled at it (a notable exception: Rob Balder, who has gotten a lot of practice with his Erfworld text updates, and is in the midst of a months-long page-at-a-time story; in print, Terry Moore used the technique to great effect in Strangers In Paradise).

  I’m mentioning this because Spangler was kind enough to send me a complementary copy of a new, brief, prose-dominant PDF of bonus stories, giving some color and definition to a pair of her minor characters (only seen in a handful pages in the past 10% or so of the story). The thing is, you don’t need to know very much about the (fairly complex) backstory of AGAHF³ to appreciate Issues (for that is its name) and what it reveals about Mare and Rachel (for they are the subjects).

  What you get is a compelling look at the insides of two characters that — had these short stories never been published — wouldn’t affect the overall narrative one whit. It’s an unnecessary set of words, unless you happen to like reading words that are especially well put together for no other reason than it gives you pleasure; in that case, it’s very necessary.

  With AGAHF merch appearing relatively infrequently (Spangler is just now getting to her first big-ticket items — a plush and a book), the majority of the income she’s made to compensate her for the expenses of the comic and time away from paying gigs has been from the sale of PDFs (there were two prior short comic stories, both also worth your time). If you like reading things, you could do far worse than to kick three (3) dollars (US) into the pot and pick up Issues.

  I think it’s great, but one might consider me to have a bias given how much I like Spangler’s work (and rumor has it that a certain hack web com artist pseudojournalist wrote the forward to her first book). Fortunately, as LeVar Burton always used to say, you don’t have to take my word for it — if you spring for the three bucks and utterly hate it, email me and I’ll split the cost with you⁴. I don’t think I’m going to be out much money.

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¹ Second place: Jeph Jacques, who it turns out went to college with Spangler. Small world.

² My niece, who works a counter for a major cosmetics vendor, tells me that Spangler’s piece is 100% accurate in every way.

³ What you would need to know is that Mare and Rachel were agents in an experimental Federal program that involved untried technology and mental conditioning techniques that left the survivors damaged. There, all caught up. If you want the longer recap, it’s here.

⁴ I am sincere in this offer, and trust that anybody who makes a claim to me for a buck-fifty will likewise be sincere and able to articulate why they disliked it. Those obviously trying to cash in on the (very little) money will be mercilessly mocked, but will also get the $1.50; a deal’s a deal, and I have no desire to face the wheel.

We mentioned last week some of the twisted history of the … let us say unpromising performance of the printer of Ryan North’s latest Dinosaur Comics opus. It seems that the metaphorical woods that this book had to traverse to get to you haven’t quite been cleared, but at least the remainder of the forest has been set ablaze. One takes comfort where one can.

To recap: the Hope Xinyuan Book Printing Company (with local offices in Pennsylvania, and history of being sued) produces a book run for North via TopatoCo, books which promptly fell apart. $25,000 of books that promptly fell apart. Following much heartache, they apparently got their act together enough to promise a full run of replacements.

Which promise has now been flaked upon, in that they have apparently closed up shop, have a dead website, and no way to deliver said books. This puts a limit on book sales, as there is a limited stock and resupply via an actual company will likely have to wait until after Christmas. More at the twitterfeed of TopatoCo Supremo Jeff Rowland.

There are only a few meager stabs of potential bright light in this dark cloud of complete suckitude: other TopatoCo products are unaffected. The internet is sleuthing and volunteering information¹. Hope Xinyuan Book Printing Company will not ever get business from the webcomics community again. And similar over-screwings by webcomics merch-related contract services have, in the past, resulted in seismic shifts that revolutionized webcomics for the better. It’s not a smoking crater strewn with the corpses of Ryan North’s enemies, but it’ll have to do.

Want something not completely infuriating? How about The Team Up of the New Century Which Guarantees Nothing Will Ever Be The Same? I refer, naturally, to KC Green and Lin Visel have teamed up for a comic full of naked fun times. Geez, SS Myra launched yesterday, Get Fucked (subscription required) launched today. Who makes the jump to porny goodnes next?

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¹ If any of you in the Philadelphia area wanted to do some onsite surveillance, here’s where to stake out.

Note to all the robocallers that have plagued me this election season: I have kept a mental running tally of how many times each of you has bothered me. Whoever has the fewest Annoyed Gary tickmarks gets my vote.

• Things to have: Zach Weinersmith and Howard “Evil Twin” Tayler both moved outside the usual print/t-shirt/book collection merch axis, with announcements of an iDevice app and a Kickstarting board game, respectively. Particularly impressive is the boardgame, which is sitting at just under 50% of goal around 14 hours into the campaign, despite what I would have pegged as an unusual and potentially hampering reward structure¹. I’ll have to rework my personal model of what works for Kickstarting².

  Since we’re talking about iStore iApps for iDevices, I mentioned back in May about a gent named Steven Mausch who was building a webcomics reading app in the iPad that didn’t scrape or steal content from creators. Mausch writes to let us know that the app, ComicsPanel, is now available for your consideration. Somebody with a fondleslab let us know how you like it.

• Places to go: Are you on a continent? Then you can see The PhD Movie without leaving that arbitrary geographical unit. Seven continents of screenings, kids, from Minnesota to McMurdo³ and all points between. If you’re specifically in North America, even more specifically in Toronto, the most dangerous man in webcomics is having a stealth reading of surprise material tomorrow night. Details available for those that have Facebook.
• Things to see: Magnolia Porter⁴, as previously noted, is drawing 50 Achewood characters in 50 days, and just dropped #s 48 and 49: Ramses Luther Smuckles and Cartilage Head. These have been really, really great, and it’s going to be a pleasure to see who the 50th will be, tinged with the sadness that we don’t get any more of these. If we all die tonight because of the close-shave chunk of rock heading for us, not knowing who #50 is might be the biggest disappointment of the fall of civilization.

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¹ Approximately 75% of pledgers have opted for the 2nd tier reward, which includes a copy of the finished game at the $55 level (the first tier gets you nothing but good feelings, for a minimum of $1, so we’re really talking about the first reward tier). The thing is, most of the higher tiers predominantly distinguish themselves from the $55 tier by adding in more copies of the boardgame.

² It’s based around on providing unique and progressively more desirable rewards for more money, but this one opted for a quantity approach (mostly — mixed in with the additional copies are additional game contents that would otherwise not be available or available much later to the general public, so it’s really about quantity and time).

³ Which seems to be the place in Antarctica for webcomickry.

⁴ She kicks mens asses, and she votes.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

• Sunday, I had the pleasure of Eric Colossal & Jess Fink’s company for fun, Thai food, and a quick recap on how her books are doing. It occurs to me: Jess will someday have another sexy book. Oglaf volumes will presumably continue if the first one does well. Top Shelf, TopatoCo, somebody needs to make a discount two-pack. This is something that needs to happen.
• Speaking of sexy comics full of sexy times — new webcomic alert: erstwhile Bad Mile creator Tom Walker (who is not Christopher Baldwin and has nothing to do with Christopher Baldwin, pinky swear) has decided that sci-fi comedy is the genre to be in, and thus has started telling the tales of the SS Myra, wherein there is a spaceship and a promise that things is gonna get porny on Tuesdays from now on.
• Have you noticed that Box Brown is collecting cartoons that he has submitted to and had rejected by the New Yorker? Because he totally is, and some of them are really good; others are really damn good.
• Confidential to MH and KS: congrats. They know why¹.

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¹ Maybe because they got married in the presence of dinosaurs? I used to think that my wedding was a pretty good time, but now I see that it was totally insufficient.

Dammit. We’ll try again later, too annoyed right now.

Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for new beginnings. Hope for smutty laugh-chuckles and hope that the Toronto Man-Mountain will see his oppressors utterly destroyed.

Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

• Once upon a time in a mystical land on the far side of the globe, a princess named Trudy told stories about valiant knights, crafty dwarves, evil enchantresses, and a hapless guy named Ivan and how they all got it on. Repeatedly. Except for Ivan. For various reasons, these stories were collectively called Oglaf, and yea they were not welcome in the working-places of the kingdom, where the guildmasters grew wroth and greatly angered when their ‘prentices and journeymen did look and laugh at the on-getting.

  Seeking to make Princess Trudy’s stories available far and wide, the powerful trading house of Topato did collect the stories into yon booke, priced that even the lowliest peasant could afford the tales on on-getting. But the Queen of Winter, lonely for company, did descend on the store-houses of TopatoCo, and none could come nor go until her need for companionship was assuaged. The valiant soul that brought pleasure to the Queen is not known be in these parts we’re betting it was KC — dude’s up for any kind of adventure as long as there’s a McRib in it. And they lived happily ever after!

• Also, Ryan North has a new book out, to replace the ones that the printer sent earlier in the year with the extra-special pages fall out when you open them feature. Ryan is the sort of guy that doesn’t want the pages to fall out of your book when you open it (unless that’s what you want, in which case he’d be more than happy to arrange that for you), so he and TopatoCo have spent considerable time fighting with the printer¹ who apparently thought that supplying books in this state and not replacing them with actual, functional books was just fine and dandy.

  Have you ever seen Ryan North in person? Giant of a man. I would not want to be that printer, no sir.

  So, new supply of books procured², you are now able to purchase Dinosaur Comics: Everybody Knows Failure Is Just Success Rounded Down, which includes all the adventures of T-Rex ‘n’ Friends from 2007 plus a host of guest strips. And the secret title code begun in the previous Dinosaur Comics volume³ is continued here. See if you can figure it out!

And that, my friends, is how TopatoCo saved Christmas!

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¹ In a supremely classy move, they have not disclosed the name of said printer, though it has certainly earned scorn.

² I have no facts to back this up, but I suspect that the former printer of this Dinosaur Comics collection is now no longer printing anything for the associated creators of TopatoCo, due to the extremely high likelihood that their physical plant has been reduced to a smoking crater in the ground.

³ Dudes Already Know About Chickens.