Things are about today. Things and signs and portents!

• Did I mention this already? I don’t think that I have. Jamie Noguchi (with a history in webcomics that goes waaaay back) is releasing the first book from his current (and best, in my opinion) project, ¥ellow Peril. Back to the Grind runs from the strip’s launch in February 2010 to early November of that same year (no link: spoilers), including the first eight story arcs. The only downside is that duration cuts off just before the introduction of maybe my favorite YP character, the Asian-American gay action/porn moviestar.

  The good news is that since early November of last year, Noguchi has completed eight more story arcs (and is midway through a ninth, on my favorite athletic activity), so presuming brisk sales on volume 1, he can hopefully get a second volume out to his demanding fans right quick.

• You know which continent doesn’t get enough webcomics love? Well, Antarctica, actually — aside from the occasional T-Rex visit, no joy. But Australia, despite several native–grown talents, Australian visits by creators from places far distant are pretty rare. Sure, Team Foglio, Howard Tayler¹, and a number of vision-impaired mustelids descended on the sunburned country last year, but it’s a rare sort of thing. Now we’ll see a visit Down Under by Scott and Kris (Kris and Scott) to host a program of orchestrally-performed videogame music with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And, of course, Wil Wheaton. Those wishing to see Oz in April, this is your excuse.
• Very short notice, to make up for the long notice on the Melbourne thing — Ryan North will be infiltrating the United States tomorrow, specifically to drink tea. Ryan’s announcement of the event says it’s at 4:00pm, but Yale seems to think it’s at 8:00pm? It’s probably at one of those two times, maybe! Most likely in the common room of Davenport College! That would appear to be around the corner from where Kate Beaton did the same thing earlier this year, so it appears if you want to have tea at Yale and you’re a webcomicker, it helps to be Canadian².
• Received in the mail yesterday, the pack full of joy pictured up top, courtesy of the Canadianest Viking ever, Rene Engström. There a beautiful Anders Loves Maria print, and some minis, and a lovely watercolor of Engström and her sweetie, Rasmus Gran. It’s the last that really caught my eye, because as anybody that’s read Engström’s diary comics (from which the minis are drawn) or her parallel journal comic with Gran, So Far Apart, can tell you, it’s:
  1. Rene and Rasmus are absolutely, crazily in love/lust with each other
  2. Rene and Rasmus sometimes annoy the ever-loving shit out of each other

  That’s what I love about Engström’s work — the honesty. It’s easy to gloss over the little difficulties in your day, or to make your sweetie (or yourself) look better than circumstances might actually warrant. To show the unvarnished truth, the rough patches that exist in every life and relationship but which most wouldn’t want public? That’s a rare thing. It’s not exhibitionism, it’s purely a dedication to showing things as they are, metaphorical warts and all.

  When Engström asked what topic I’d like for the watercolor (part of a fund drive some time back) I immediately requested a portrait of her and Gran, because I knew she’d put all those emotions, all the positives and negatives into it, that it would be an object not just of artistic skill, but of beauty that could only be achieved by revealing all those layers. And damn, she knocked it out of the park.

  Also, she totally draws my moustache better than anybody else.

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¹ My evil twin.
² Also, to be awesome.

Yeah, the home computer pretty much needs a rebuild. There goes my evenings and upcoming weekend. How are you?

• If there is any justice in this world I will win this — a Wondermarkish physical artifact, which has been given the Malki ! treatment (malkied? malkified?) not via Photoshop, but rather by careful use of an Xacto knife and wood joinery. It’s being given away by the good folks behind Hendrick’s Gin, which is beautifully, wonderfully tasty stuff, although it doesn’t look quite large enough to hold my bottle of Hendrick’s, I’m sure it has many uses.

  Please, whatever you do, do not go to the contest giveaway page and enter the drawing (US residents only), because doing so will only dilute my chances of winning, as is my due.

• Programming for NYCC is now posted, but it’s somewhat difficult to read — you can see lists of sessions by date (example: Thursday via text, Thursday via grid) or by track (example: comics, only available in grid form), but only the session titles and times show. In order to see descriptions or participants, you have to “drill down” (as the business meeting types say) by clicking on the title, which makes it difficult to scan for keywords of interest (like “webcomics”). As such, I was only able to find one session that is relevant to our weird little tribe:
  How the Webcomic Publishing Sausage Gets Made
  8:45 pm – 9:45 pm, Room 1A23
  Follow along on a webcomic’s long odyssey as it goes from its home on the internet to a publisher, a warehouse, and finally into the hands of its loving fans with expert tour guides Zach Weiner and representatives from Breadpig Publishing and Amplifier Fulfillment.

  There may well be others, but hell if I could find ’em.

• Received recently in the mail:
  

  Hopefully this isn’t too forward of me, but I’m sort of starting out as a web cartoonist (only about 60 pages into a story) and was wondering, since you guys know a fair bit about webcomics, if you’d mind taking a look and letting me know what you think. My goal is to put out a great comic, so any tips would be really appreciated! that is, if you want. Either way, thanks a lot for keeping up this blog, it’s a great resource for me.

  That’s from Lorena TL of LS-Zián Comics. Taking a quick glance, it’s got a loopy visual style that’s arranged into (so far) four story arcs, the most recent starting here. So far, so good. Here’s what I can give to Lorena (or anybody else asking similar questions)¹:

  1. The archive calendar shows an update history of 1 – 3 comics per week, randomly spaced. Yeah, yeah, RSS readers, everybody’s got ’em, don’t care. Pick a schedule, commit to it, readers will appreciate the regularity.
  2. If you’re going to be doing story arcs, every page has to both move the arc forward and stand on its own. Every page is likely to be somebody’s first (as this one was for me), and if I can’t get some sense of what’s going on in the overall story, I’m far less likely to dig back to a starting point and invest my time.

     If you’re a complete master, you can get away with single pages that don’t have a clear conclusion to them (cf: anything by Evan Dahm; the Overside stories simply must be read long-form, but he’s so visually interesting you’re willing to make that leap). And even complete masters will go out of their way to deliver a punchline, or story beat, or a big interesting speech.

  3. To paraphrase Brad Guigar, it should be impossible to get worse at something you’ve practiced thousands of times. But don’t just fail to get worse: get better, and better, and better.

  Here endeth the lesson.

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¹ Bearing in mind that I’m not a creator — I’m a typical (if likely more widely-read than usual) representation of your audience.

Three major challenges today, that is, which pretty much erupted in the first half-hour after waking up. Since then it’s just been a normal Monday, for certain values of normal¹.

• And that’s all before considering that it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day. I don’t hold much truck with this holiday; to me, 19 September will always instead be It’s Anniversary!² But dadnugget³ Crumbs has gone and made TLAPD actually valuable. Yarrgh.
• Ultimately, though, there are two words that will redeem any bad times, even a Monday-Squared:

  Anime.

  Club.

• In other news, Jim Zub took time out from kicking ass and skulls with the funnest comic book on the racks presently to drop me a mysterious little email:
  

  Hey Gary,
  Check this out:
  http://www.makeshiftmiracle.com/

  Keep your eyes on it… it’s gonna be a beaut.

  Those of us that remember Zub’s first comics work, The Makeshift Miracle (which launched, oh, about ten years ago) are rightfully intrigued by this turn of events and one-week countdown. Might there be a relaunch? Remastered art? Further adventures? The mind reels, and quite frankly anything that he throws at us, I’m gonna be thrilled. Hooray!

• New Recipe Comix, this time from John Allison as Mildred and Lottie explore Toads and Holes and demystify one of those terribly British dishes that I never knew what it was and was scared to look at too closely. But Lottie and Mildred wouldn’t steer me wrong, no matter how angry-eyed those smash potatoes are.
• Last thoughts for today — as teasered in the Before Times (i.e.: ten days ago), Shaenon Garrity (Radness Queen of some appropriate Geologic Feature and Nexus of all Webcomics Realities that don’t involve the Toronto Man-Mountain) has dropped some wisdom regarding Kickstartering for you today over at The Comics Journal. All who plan to use the microfinance service would do well to read it carefully.

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¹ For example, Phillip informs me that the WordPress weirdness I encountered last week may recur for a period of time this week, as different projects get migrated/consolidated on his various back-end servers. Also, the latest WordPress update has shifted my editing window to a really small, console-like typeface, which I kind of like. But it’s different, and on a Monday, so it gets brought up.

Also, what is up with Flaco’s cleavage in today’s Sheldon? That’s just … disturbing.

² Happy second anniversary, David and Maggie.

³ It’s not Estradarama, either, because Ryan Estrada is too busy trekking across South America.

For why not, see here and here. While Phillip has done his usual magic and got things back, I now lack the time to do more than point you at Intervention (launching today) and the Webcomics Longevity/Frequency chart.

My only comment here is that it seems to take the “frequency” part a bit loosely, as lengthy hiatuses and interruptions seem not to have dislodged comics like Achewood and Megatokyo from their original frequencies (approximately five and three days a week, neither of which does so now), nor credited those comics that have upped their frequencies (Girls With Slingshots, say).

It does, however, show how useless averages are, as occasional behemoths (50+ panels in a Diesel Sweeties, say, or a thousands-of-panels Dr Mcninja page really have very little effect on the overall averages. I will pay a dollar to anybody that adds in standard deviation and variances to this chart, and another dollar for skew and kurtosis¹.

PS: Phillip, thanks the back end works now but it’s still wonky about displaying the editing page and Dashboard. Welp, gotta run!

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¹ Any day I get to use the word kurtosis is a good day.

Gaaahhhh. Busy.

• J Grant, one half of the creator pair behind Two Lumps, has written a story that nobody wanted to publish so he’s all Screw it, up on the web and pay what you like [PDF]. I’ve liked very much the things that Grant has written and I have read; perhaps this will occupy me on the long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow.
• Brad, Dave, and Kris, in addition to being three quarters of the hottest boy band ever the Halfpixel webcomicking posse, used to do a reasonably regular podcast. Busy schedules (seriously Guigar was away on vacation for like 75% of the summer, I thought he’d been elected to Congress), a head cold (Scott Kurtz), and frustrating audio woes tried their best to delay any new releases of Webcomics Weekly, but have failed. Maybe I’ll be able to listen to this one [MP3] on the long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow.
• Oh man does this look pretty. It won’t be out in time for my long, late flight home from Vegas tomorrow, but oh well — I would wait any amount of time for The Anime Club.

Okay, about 30 seconds until have to go sit in meetings all day. Perhaps for breakfast I’ll have some delicious, nutrifying bacon. Or is that horrifying? I always mix those two up.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say “Seminars, Bloody Seminars”, or “Presentations, Bloody Presentations”¹, but those wouldn’t let me invoke John Cleese, now would they? So busy today.

• Per the comments, Box Brown pointed out correctly that he was not the only repeat winner in this year’s Ignatz Awards — Joe Lambert won for both Outstanding Anthology or Collection and Outstanding Artist. Fleen regrets the oversight.
• Stripped keeps doing notable things, and there’s still a week left in the Kickstarter campaign (as of this writing: 140% funded). Today it’s an open call for creative types to participate:
  

  We’re extending a worldwide “open call” to independent, freelance, or small-team animators, to produce very short segments for the feature-length documentary, STRIPPED.

  Over 50 animators have already submitted samples, before we even asked for work. …It kinda blew us away, frankly! But we’d like to formalize that process, to better review everyone’s work, and compare apples to apples.

  There’s instructions how to submit on the Kickstarter page, with submission requirement #3 being particularly interesting:

  Your requested rate for 10-, 30-, or 45-seconds of animation

  Wait, rate? Let’s check the FAQ:

  Q: Is this a paid job?
  A: Yes.

  Well, that’s pretty unambiguously (especially considering how much, much larger and funded entities keep trying to get creative types to work for free exposure), and ties in nicely with Meredith Gran’s rule for promoting the careers of women²:

  Pay them. No, seriously. Pay them with money.

  The movie just got a whole bunch more interesting (and it looks like this development was driven by creators wanting to participate, sending in their offers to work before there was a call for them), as I don’t think this direction was part of Freddave Kellett-Schroeder’s original plan. Can’t wait to see what the animators of the world come up with.

Okay. Time for eight hours of presentations with no cell coverage in the basement level of a casino meeting facility. Joy.

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¹ Sadly, no chance of “Symposia, Bloody Symposia”, given that the original definition of “symposium” was “drinking party”.

² Equally applicable to any under-represented group — especially those just starting out in their fields.

• I’m pretty sure that if Erika Moen could have done a For Better or For Worse blinky effect without it being completely creepy, Gyp would be totally winking at us in that last panel as the fourth wall is irretrievably shattered and we are cued for input. Speaking of which, I think I saw Bucko outside SUPER BAIL in Vegas. Dude does not want to go back to jail.
• Had I mentioned that Dean Trippe’s Butterfly is back? I don’t think I did. So, um, Dean Trippe’s Butterfly is back, and a much-missed all-ages webcomic is once again in my regular rotation¹. Also let it be noted that he has mastered the Beaton Posture.
• Not quite three months ago, the good folks at :01 Books were kind enough to send me a review copy of Feynman by Ottaviani and Myrick. The book released to the wider world about three weeks ago, and next Sunday’s New York Times bestseller list for hardcover graphic novels shows Feynman in the top slot².

  In my review of Feynman I talked at length about the man, what he meant to me, and how good the content between the covers was, but I neglected — shamefully! — to note that Collen AF Venable did her usual stellar job of book and cover design. I believe that the pull quote on the cover³ was particularly her choice, and he deserves praise just for that element alone. The cover is bold, eye-catching, and tells you everything you need to know because let’s face it — we totally judge books by their covers.

  I’m entirely convinced that while people like me who seek out :01’s offerings would always recognize their uniformly excellent quality, the cover design is a huge part of what convinces the reading public to buy the damn things. Feynman might have been the first #1 bestseller Venable contributed to, but it won’t be her last. Speaking of which I believe the fourth book in her Guinea PI series is available and you should buy it because it’s super cute⁴.

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¹ On occasion, I find myself wistfully wondering if Lunchbox Funnies will ever make a full comeback — most of the creators are on to other projects, but dang it was a nice hub for getting your all-ages fix.

² A somewhat narrow category to be sure, but as of this writing, it’s presently #839 overall at Amazon, #6 among all comics and graphic novels, and #1 in Physics. Also, #1 in biographies specifically of Feynman, which is a ridiculously narrow category.

³ If that’s the world’s smartest man, God help us, credited to Feynman’s mom.

⁴ I believe the technical term is “totes adorbs”.

Alternate title: It’s a Box, Box, Box, Box World.

So Dustin Harbin hosted the Ignatz Awards were held over the weekend at SPX, and the signature bricks went to a variety of talented creators, with a healthy showing by webcomickers.

As widely expected, Kate Beaton continued her metaphorical march to the sea of cartooning, burning and pillaging all in her wake, and taking the brick for Outstanding Online Comic. I’ma go out on a limb and say they should just set one aside for next year’s awards for the best collection or reprint or whatever the most appropriate category might be¹ for her new collection from D&Q. The darn thing sold out almost immediately and I have a first-hand account that Beaton’s signing line was “redonkulous”.

The Ignatz for Promising New Talent (which award in the past has gone to people as distinguished as Carla Speed McNeil, Nick Bertozzi, Derek Kirk Kim, Andy Runton, Hope Larson, and Sarah Glidden) went to Darryl Ayo [Brathwaite] (sometimes he uses the surname, sometimes not), who I had the pleasure of talking with last year at … was it NEWW? I think it was NEWW. Focused, clever young man, lot of future success to be had. I think there’s a lot of interest in his comics work today, as one of his sites is down, presumably from over clicking.

Meanwhile, Box Brown was the night’s only repeat winner, taking two bricks for Outstanding Mini Comic (Ben Died of a Train) and Outstanding Series (Everything Dies). Brown’s quickly become webcomics’ most prominent explorer of eschatological topics, and it’s nice to see him recognized for both a personal reflection of a death and the polar extreme of trying to examine beliefs of what happens to all of us in death.

And keeping on the Box Brown theme for just a moment longer, his Retrofit Comics imprint has released its first monthly comic, James Kochalka’s Fungus, which got a writeup at the AV Club today. Box Brown’s on a roll, and all you can do is get out of the way, or grab hold and hang on for dear life.

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¹ Also a Harvey, an Eisner, a Shuster, and every other comics award.

I’m headed to one of my not-favorite places on earth, Las Vagrus, Nevadruh¹, a place I can generally tolerate for about 72 hours. I’ll be there from tomorrow through next Friday. Anyway, between an extensive work schedule and time zones, expect postings to go up late. I know, you’re strong and will muddle through somehow. With any luck, I can use the plane ride to get enough re-reads of Amulet 4 in that I’ll be able to do a proper review. Short version: Wow.

• Submitted without comment, via Bernie Hou‘s twitterfeed:
  

  Of all the–…? My If You See Something, Say Something print on @topatoco got cease & desisted by the MTA

  Sorry for all the millions I was costing you, MTA! Now that I’ve taken it down, you can lower your fares right

  Okay, one comment: the now-evaporated print was done from this comic, re-done with the assistance of the lovely Carly Monardo as the foreground model, and fortunately can never be seen by anybody ever again.

• Anniversary Desk: The Exclamationverse! (which presently consists of four separate, linked strips, plus one reimagining) hit 14 years old yesterday, based on a premiere date of 8 September 1997 for Roomies! And based on a 9 September 2001 launch, Wapsi Square turns ten years old today. Put Paul Taylor and David Willis together and you have webcomics experience that’s been old enough to drink for three years already. Well done, guys.
• This looks intriguing. Shaenon Garrity² is going to do a presentation on Kickstarter at the Alternative Press Expo the first weekend of October in San Francisco. I’ll be at my niece’s wedding in New York, so I’m going to have to miss out on what promises to be a wealth of good information, particularly considering that Garrity may still hold the record for pledge amount/contributor ratio (at the time of that posting, about US$92 per pledger; final ratio just over US$76 each). If you’ve used Kickstarter to good effect, she’d like to hear from you — drop her a message via the tweets machine.

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¹ Partially due to my severe allergies to excessive neon and arbitrary noise, partially because it was never better described than when Frank called it de hypocritical Jeezis-jerknuh parodise.

² Radness Queen of the East Bay and Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, North American Cordillera division.

Does mail still come in bags? I keep hearing that the Postal Service here in the US is on the verge of nonexistence, so maybe soon there won’t be any mailbags except in the metaphorical sense.

• Following up on yesterday’s mention of convention codes of conduct, Fleen Publisher and Impressario-General Phillip Karlsson¹ emailed me to point out that this discussion is taking place in other communities. For those that want to see how the Perl coder community is discussing standards of conduct, make with the clicky.
• Also following up on yesterday’s mention of indy/webcomic-themed conventions in general, Rebecca Viola emailed me a bit ago to mention a newcomer to the con circuit:
  

  We thought you would be interested in hearing about our second annual comics show. Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) is back and has a fabulous new website with tons of information about panels and new comic debuts! The show will be held Saturday, Sept 24 and is open to all ages with free admission.

  You thought right, Rebecca, and given the short duration, all-ages orientation, and free admission, I’d say that MICE is helping fill a niche that’s really only served by TCAF at present. I’ve spoken with some people that were at the inaugural MICE last year and they all had good things to say about it; if you’re in the New England area and are looking for creators the likes of Christopher Baldwin, Alexander Danner, or various TopatoCosters (not to mention what looks like a bunch of up and comers — people that we’re all going to be talking about in a few years time), make your way to Cambridge on 24 September.

• Speaking of things timed around cons, Kel McDonald wrote to tell me about an undertaking launching just after SPX:
  

  Right after SPX, Spike, Diana, myself, Lin Visel, and a few others are running this Tumblr contest. It’s kinda like the Ironman Challenge but with a time limit.

  Kel was hoping that I’d get my ass in gear soon enough to help promote the SketchBet so that there’d be plenty of participants, but her email came in during my Irene-prompted downtime. No matter, as the contest is full up with participants, so we can sit back and watch the fun roll in starting 17 September. See you there.

• Not email, but too cool to keep to myself: readers of this page may recall that I loves me some A Girl And Her Fed³, and I particularly love the character of Mr Speedy, a genetically-modified, ultra-rightwing, chlamydia-infested, viciously sarcastic koala. In case I didn’t have enough dick jokes in my life, I will soon be able to have a plush Speedy to prompt my recollection of his choicest word-bombs. Warning: they’re salty.

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¹ For newcomers, Fleen is service² of Phillip’s company, Dumbrella Hosting (which also hosts a series of high-quality webcomics as well as Oh No Robot and Project Wonderful. He makes sure that everything on the site works, leaving me to be the vaguely entertaining blog-monkey, and the deal is that in return for churning out the word count, he buys my drinks anytime we’re in the same place. Given that he lives in Rhode Island and I live in New Jersey, and that my liver is not nearly as debased as his, this does not put an excessive crimp in his booze budget.

² Possibly even a public service ernouncemint.

³ Rumor has it that I may have written the foreword to the first AGAHF print collection, coming soon.