I’m not going to say that somebody literally snuck poo bugs into my food, but I’m not saying that they didn’t, either. It’s been that kind of day. Quickly, then:

• Not specifically webcomics, but worth your attention: Jessica Hische (creator of the justly-famed Should I Work For Free? flowchart) has a thought-provoking essay on pricing your work. It’s written from the standpoint of a designer, but you can easily translate most of what it says to any independent creator-driven environment.
• On the horizon: Webcomicscon, first weekend of October (I’ll be at my niece’s wedding), in Norwalk, CT. First thing I noticed on their homepage is something you don’t normally see on con sites: a Code of Conduct, which looks pretty good. But might I make a suggestion that some variation of Wheaton’s Law be included as a numbered item, and a declaration that creepy, stalkery, unwanted-touchy people are not to be tolerated? I’ve seen people with no sense of personal boundaries at enough cons that, sadly, such an explicit statement of what should be minimally decent human conduct is necessary.
• Speaking of cons, webcomics überfan Michael Kinyon pointed me (and thus I point you) towards DigiCon, the virtual convention for those that can’t travel to cons. Interesting idea, curious to see how it works out, although scheduling it against SPX was probably not the best date they could come up with.

… and he’s pointing and casually declaring, Comics. Why is it I can’t see this sort of thing happening in America? We suck¹.

• About three months back, Jorge Cham released an initial set of screening dates for his cinematical entertainment, and I noted a screening tentatively set for my backyard. Yesterday, a far more precise screening schedule dropped, and it’s … I think that extensive is not sufficiently broad to describe what it is. More than one hundred showings are listed, with as many as a half dozen on the same day in far corners of the world. I note that Cham himself will be doing live Qs and As at some twenty of the showings, often accompanied by members of cast or crew.

  I’m particularly interested in this one in particular, as it’s very close to my home and thus I’ll be able to buy Jorge a drink by means of congratulations. Hope to see some of you out there, and a special message to all grad students past and present: it’s okay to laugh until you cry, since the alternative most likely available to you is to merely cry until you climb a tower with a rifle. Nameless bystanders, drop a word of thanks to Cham for giving all those potential spree killers a safe outlet for their grad-study insanities.

• Speaking of movies, Dave Kellett announced a bonus set of video clips from Stripped yesterday, featuring Kate Beaton, Ryan North², Richard Thompson³, and Greg Evans. Backers also have access to an extra clip of the man who might have done more to define comic stripping in the past few decades than anybody else: Jim Davis.
• Speaking of strips, Striptease wrapped up today, Chris Daily having been cranking out comics for damn near 11 years and more than 1000 updates. Fun fact #1: Daily was the first webcomicker I ever met, way the hell back at the first MoCCA Fest, probably around the time of the Inker Search storyline. Fun fact #2: just about every other webcomic referenced in those strips is no longer around, but Daily continues; look for book collections in the near future, and for the resumption of Punch an’ Pie from hiatus, and whatever pops into his head because there’s no stoppin’ the guy.
• Received last evening at my twitterfeed, via Patrick Race of Alaska Robotics, a short missive of great import:
  

  @fleenguy It might take a second but I think when you realize what this means you’ll be pretty excited. http://verabee.com/letter/testing.gif

  You guys. You guys. Almost the very first thing I ever wrote on this site was an appreciation of Vera Brosgol‘s Return to Sender, a webcomic so good it retains a spot in my bookmarks even though it’s seen no updates since 2004 and only one brief bloggening in 2007 (plus one crossover via a Scary Go Round guest strip nearly lost in the aether). But damn me if that link doesn’t look like Often and Colette, with perhaps a bit more of the crazy eyes that Brosgol used to such good effect in Anya’s Ghost. YOU GUYS, I AM MAYBE ABOUT TO BE THE HAPPIEST COMICS READER IN HISTORY.

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¹ If you’re going to get het up about that declaration of suckitude, it’s not a general comment on the country as a whole or its relative value or righteousness, just on our tragic underuse of Post-It Notes to create Pedobear on the office wall.

² Nexus of All Webcomics Realities, Northern Division.

³ Not the musician with the extra-nimble fingers.

Hurricane cleanup done, work nearly caught up, end-of-summer slowdown easing away, let’s get back to this embloggenation, shall we?

• The final countdown to this year’s Small Press Expo is underway, with nearly everybody from web/indy comics that you can think of, and work has me going in very nearly the opposite direction. Have fun in Bethesda (and the following weekend for Intervention) for me; I’ll be picking up a case of neon poisoning in Las Vegas.
• With just about half of the pledge period past, Stripped is sitting about 125% of goal, meaning that what might be the most important “if we go over goal” is pretty much a certainty. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I never considered the costs of closed captioning, but Freddave Kellett-Schroeder didn’t; comics are uniquely appealing to the hard of hearing, and now they won’t be left out of what could become a definitive exploration of the medium. Also, somebody check me on this — has any previous project in the comics arena gathered as many supporters as Stripped? As of this writing, 1765 people have pledged actual cash money to the project, which strikes me as a significantly high number¹
• Dustin Harbin — well versed in comics of all sorts — has had his thinking cap on and congealed his thinks into Fifteen Thoughts on Digital Comics. These thoughts are aimed squarely at those that publish comics on paper and are now flirting with comics in the digital realm, and it’s worth reading for anybody that makes or loves comics, because the way that large producers answer Harbin’s concerns will determine the future — even the existence — of comics. My eye particularly lingered on thoughts number 10 and 11:
  

  10) It seems to me like a foregone conclusion that people are going to one day wake up and think “Hey, why are comics the most expensive media purchase I make each month?” Digital device culture is increasingly ubiquitous, and the idea that the comics industry can funnel its readership in a direction that’s somehow in the best interests of publishers, brick-and-mortar retailers, and digital distribution companies is … hard to swallow. This is driven home to me whenever the “day-and-date” question pops up. Essentially, “Should digital comics be available the same day as their (presumably better? more important?) print version?” Because that question has nothing to do with users, and everything to do with print publishers and comic book shops. Here’s why:

  11) Publishers have tricked themselves into thinking that digital comics –- THEIR digital comics –- are somehow competition for their own print comics. They’re the same comics! You made them, publishers! Surely any person on your staff under the age of 40 can see that hmmmm, maybe print is not the safest boat to float in, maybe digital is going to be big “one day”? Alter your business model and give room to both. Stop competing with yourself, and start competing with your competitors again.

  One might note that webcomics² deal with those concerns neatly. Furthermore, webcomics³ seems to have engaged in one behavior that crucially differences it from the big print enterprises — there’s an ongoing (sometimes low-level, but always acknowledged in the background) conversation to the effect of What next? What comes after the current form of webcomics? What will be the next method of distribution, the next business model, the way that I meet the challenges that haven’t popped up yet?

  The reticence of print comics publishers to have that conversation among themselves is similar to the response of the music and movie industries to non-physical forms of their products. DC and Marvel may not have thrown around lawsuits with ridiculous monetary damages claimed like the MPAA and RIAA, but they have spent a similar period of time denying the shift to digital and engaging in a reaction that essentially amounted to If we ignore it hard enough it will go away and when we deal with it, it will be from a perspective of trying to keep things as much the same as they’ve always been. Whether they make the mental (and business model) shifts necessary to keep up with technological changes will determine how much of their industry still exists in ten years.

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¹ Not to mention the thirteen backers that have pledged at the US$500, US$1000, and US$5000 (!) levels.

² That is, creator-owned, web distribution to start, print and otherwise tangible iterations to follow.

³ Passim.

Still at least two more days of cleanup to do in the wake of Hurricane Irene¹, plus now I’m behind on work-work, and the mold now marshaling² its forces in my basement wants me dead.

Come back Monday. I’ll apologize then for missing things like the 2000th QC and the return of Butterfly.

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¹ Readers of this page of course know that the only hurricane we cotton to is Hurricane Erika.

² As opposed to Marshall-ing, and if Rick wants me dead for all those Willenholly jokes, he and his lovely wife have more than prepared the tools to do so.

Wrapped up in preparations for this weekend’s hurricane and my necessity to be out in the middle of it. Bleah. Not likely to have anything for you tomorrow either, and depending on what happens to the power grid, not sure when I’ll be back next week.

Those of you on the East Coast, stay safe. Talk to you when I can.

Readers of this page may recall that I have mentioned in the past a work-in-progress that I consider to be really significant: a documentary film¹ on the state of cartooning, in these times of great change, by Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder. Said documentary recently acquired a title (Stripped²) and a trailer, and reached the milestone where the real work left is post-production: editing, effects, sound mix, color timing, and other words that mean nothing to you and me because we don’t work in the film industry.

To get to this point has cost Kellett and Schroeder two years, countless trips to interview subjects³ (more than 60 of them, which means that NEWW2 must have been a godsend because they were able to talk to more than a dozen people in one weekend), and undoubtedly a serious chunk o’ personal cash. Keep in mind that documentaries don’t make a huge amount of money — this has been a labor of love, cost them each deep, and taken time that could have been spent on projects that paid them actual cash money for things like rent and food.

To finish at this point will require more money than has been spent to date, so they need some help. If I were Kellett and/or Schroeder⁴, I’d be going crazy right about now. Crazy that the financials won’t work out and the film won’t get finished. Crazy that the financials do work out and Oh god I have to finish it and there will be a million little things that only I notice and why didn’t I fix that bit of sound and that was a dumb question and, and, and….

While we can’t do anything about that self-doubt that seems to affect all the great creative minds, we can at least help make sure that the financials not working out fears are put to rest. The requisite Kickstarter campaign (where you may view the trailer) is live, and in the (approximate, as of this writing) 24 hours since it launched, 512 backers have gotten Freddave Kellett-Schroeder 32% of the way to their US$58,000 goal.

People, we can do better than this. I particularly want to draw your attention to a FAQ at the bottom of the project page (past all the photos of eminent cartoonists, cartoon historians, and one hack webcomics pseudojournalist):

What will you do if you exceed your funding goal for STRIPPED?

If we exceed the goal by a *small* amount:
We’ve carefully budgeted for a set amount of special effects and animations … and it’s going to look gorgeous! BUT! With even a slightly larger budget, we’d be able to add significantly more effects and animations … upping the look of the whole film.
===========================
If we exceed the goal by a *large* amount:
We have a big-picture idea that gets us very excited. We’d like to edit and make available ALL 230 HOURS of the individual interviews. These cartoonists shared incredible stories, tips, tricks, and recollections with us, and we’d love them to be enjoyed and preserved for posterity.

As we’ve said elsewhere … the 13-year old versions of ourselves would’ve killed to watch all these interviews, so making them available to the world would be a real gift to all who love cartooning.

I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned this before — knowing so many talented cartoonists, getting to hang with them over beers, counting so many of them as friends is one of the high points of my life. No fooling, no hyperbole, the sheer talent oozing out of the people I get to see on a semiregular basis takes my breath away. The only downside is that when the sketching starts, I have nothing to contribute — I can’t draw worth a damn⁵.

This is something that I intend to remedy before I die; at whatever point in time I can free up the hours, I will take lessons in drawing, then start doodling the thousands of hours until I develop a repeatable cartooning style, and I will join in one of those sketch-fests (that always seem to degenerate into Bomers doing rude things) … possibly not until the funerals of the older and harder-living among the circle of friends⁶.

This is why you need to donate. Not just because it’s a worthy project. Not just because it may become the definitive documentation of an artform at a moment of key change (something I don’t believe has happened before, in any medium). Not just because Fred and Dave are the nicest guys you might ever meet.

You need to donate so that the goal is obliterated to Hades and back, so that I get those 230 hours of tips and tricks and my end-of-life shakydoodles are barely acceptable. Fail to do so, and you will be spitting on the final wishes of a dying man. And I think we all know how horrible that would be.

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¹ If you ever get Dave Kellett to do his Irish Guy voice, make sure you get him talking about the state of the “fillum” — it’s adorable.

² I’m still holding out for Hot Pen On Paper COMIXXX Action.

³ Their raw interview footage accounts for more than 200 hours at this point; if it were your full-time, 9-5 Monday-Friday job to watch that footage, it would take you more than five weeks to do so.

⁴ Interesting dilemma — which of those two would I be? Dave’s family is wonderful and he has a lemon tree in his yard. Fred’s a filmmaker in LA, which has to be good for meeting ladies. I simply can’t decide which of them I should assume the identity of for the purposes of this discussion.

⁵ Let me amend that statement — I can do circuit diagrams that are crisp, clean, balanced to the eye, and generally aesthetically pleasing, but these are geometric-symbol representations of abstract mathematics. I can’t draw things in the real world, no matter how cartoony or abstract, worth the aforementioned damn.

⁶ My money’s on Rosenberg to go first, from Spontaneous Whisky Immolation; eventually it will be just a coffee-infused Rich Stevens, a post-singularity Aaron Diaz, and me to document their discussion.

Since we’re all going to die in an East Coast Apocalyptoquake, I’m about to head down to the End Times Bunker and make sure that looters haven’t gotten into the beans. In the meantime, earthquake vet Raina Telgemeier would like us to know what a real damn earthquake is like. Hopefully, her comics will serve to buoy our spirits while we rebuild from the devastation.

Speaking of devastation, I’m on my second re-read of Zahra’s Paradise, a review copy of which was thoughtfully sent to me by the good folk of :01 Books, and devastating is the only word I have to describe it at the moment. I’m going to need some more time to absorb before I do a formal review but for now, suffice it to say that this is a book that leaves you feeling raw. For those of you following along online, there are only a few pages left, and then the book drops on 13 September, just as the last page goes online.

That’s not fair — like the man sang, Bozo was a freakin’ genius [NSFW lyrics, depdending on where you W]. These people causing me headaches, they’re no Bozos. Let’s focus on some people that could very well fall into the freakin’ genius category and call it a day.

• Awards updates — Kate Beaton was at a wedding, but that didn’t stop her from winning the Harvey Award for Best Online Comics Work (page to be updated Real Soon Now, no doubt) at Baltimore Comic Con. And Kaja & Phil Foglio (with colors by Cheyenne Wright); made it three for three and remain the only people to ever win a Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. Congrats to Beaton, the Foglios, and Wright.
• The Modern Humor Authority (by Kris Straub) is gone and its domain squatted for good (no link, but I understand it offers a plethora of information about training to be a phlebotomist¹), but nothing that analytically brilliant ever completely goes away. Humor Authority is Straub’s new podcast on the theory and application of what’s funny with Straub and people who commit acts of humor in public on a regular basis — the first episode is now live, with Axe Cop/Bearmaggedon (co-)/creator Ethan Nicolle; it’s a wide-ranging and smart conversation (I keep thinking of Inside the Actors Studio), and I can’t wait to see who else goes into the chair. The best thing I can say about this still-nascent conversation series is that it entirely avoids the famous EB White² aphorism about the analysis of humor³.
• Not that long ago, the notion of “game related to webcomic” was a rarity. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen an Axe Cop expansion to Munchkin and a campaign to make a piratey boardgame, and now a new Kickstarter for a new card game. Difference — instead of being inspired by webcomics work, or the work of a webcomics creator, Borogrove is a card game that first appeared as a game within Kory Bing’s Skin Deep, and now might make the leap to actually being A Thing.

  Actually, that “might” is a bit more tentative that it should be, considering we’re three (3) days into the 30 day campaign and Bing has already raised (as of this writing) US$4459 of the $5500 required (or 81% of goal in 10% of time). I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the 500 decks are going to be made, and maybe a few extra. Those interested can check out the rules for Borogrove here.

• Side note: I picked up Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 3: Reason at my local comic shop last week, which led to an obsessive re-reading of all three books (and shortly, the couple of chapters since the third volume). Damn, Tom Siddell knows how to plant story hooks. I thought I was a pretty keen observer of life at the Court, but it’s only in reading the whole thing in a narrow timeframe that you really see how much he’s planned, and how many questions are yet to be answered. Wonderful stuff.

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¹ Really.

² The other one, not the webcomics-snarky one.

³ Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

Re: in the rundown of comics-related awards in yesterday’s post, I neglected to mention that the Hugo Awards are this weekend, but Christopher Baldwin reminded me in a comment. One might argue that the Hugos aren’t really comics awards, but some of our own — Howard Tayler, Professora & Professor Foglio — have been nominated in the category of Best Graphic Story, and we at Fleen wish them luck. Also, if anybody in Reno is reading this, find out if Howard’s still got the accent of doom¹.

• There are words in this next bit that I thought would never appear on this blog. See if you can guess what they are!
  

  Death At Your Door is just past a year old so we’re celebrating with an extra large strip with a killer recipe for head cheese.

  DAYD (last mentioned about six months back, in the context of noting how it’s a product of its place²) creator Rod Salm wasn’t kidding. Yum?

• Taking another dip into the past, SMASH was last mentioned about a year back, as creators Chris and Kyle Bolton were getting the first story arc (or “season”) ready for print, which gave them time to work up the second. With all that prep behind them, Season Two is ready to launch on Thursday 25 August; in the meantime, Season One has been replaying at the breakneck pace of a page a day, and is ready for your review so you’re all caught up. Go crazy.
• Want to know what I’ve been enjoying recently? Some longformish story webcomics in English, but done from outside the North Atlantic POV. I’ve been pointed to not one, but two webcomics from the eastern side of the Mediterranean, both of which are just far enough outside the everyday life/cultural reference points as to be really intriguing. Originally from Turkey (but currently residing in SoCal), Cihan Sesen offers up dystopian future sci-fi over at Spine: Blindknot; the comics themselves have a Moebius-like feel (unsurprising, as Sesen studied French before English), but with a sensibility that comes straight from his hometown of Istanbul.

  You ever been to ‘Stambul? Never changes. Bad old town. William Gibson wrote in one of his novels. I’m not so sure about the “bad” part, but I get what he was getting at. Much like New Orleans isn’t really part of modern America (it’s a damn sight older than America, and gives up its old ways kicking and screaming), it’s just New Orleans, Istanbul isn’t part of Europe, or even part of Turkey — whatever name the city has held at various times over the last couple thousand years, it’s always been apart and different and self-sustaining.

  The modern (or future) world can try to invade all it likes, but Istanbul will always be Istanbul, and it will give up its secrets and habits only long enough to convince you it’s changed. That sense of otherness — of thinking something is familiar and yet knowing in the far-back part of your brain how wrong you are — pervades Spine: Blindknot. It’s an unpredictable ride, one that not everybody will enjoy being on.

  And you know where you’ve got a set of traditions stretching back futher than Istanbul? Lebanon. Malaak is on the surface a superhero (actually, superheroine) story, but it’s really about Lebanon and the things that make it what it is. The title character gets her powers to protect the land and its people from Lebanon’s ancient guardians, who turn out to be the cedar trees that are so associated with the country.

  Creator Joumana Medlej takes her time exploring all of the mythic creations found in her homeland, characterizing the heroic stories of the past in the idioms of the present. Surely anybody that’s lived in Beirut in the past few decades can be excused for thinking that warfare and struggle never cease, but Medlej takes that theme a little more literally — forget militias and factions, there’s always been a battle for the heart and soul of Lebanon, and not all the combatants are human.

  What both of these comics have in common, more than geography, is the ability to take traditions, histories, worldviews that would be completely foreign to almost all of their potential audience, and make them understandable via storytelling styles that anybody that reads comics will find familiar. “Endowed with powers by the Cedars of Lebanon to protect the people and the land” is no more outlandish than “strange visitor from another world upholding Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, after all. Comics is its own language, one which any human tongue or culture can build upon; I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more creators like Sesen and Medlej in the future.

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¹ That strip may feature the highest ratio of Stompy Boots per panel ever; it’s a good thing Howard and Jennie like each other, or they could do some serious damage.

² That would be Manitoba. Beautiful city out on the prairie.

Showtime is upon us; people heading to this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con will be the first to find out who wins the Harvey Awards (with nominees from various field of webcomickry including but not limited to Dustin Harbin, Kate Beaton, gala host Scott Kurtz¹, and everybody that’s ever touched The Gutters). In case that doesn’t leave you awarded out, the Ignatz Awards will be handed out a few weeks later at SPX, and The Spurge² has the list of nominees; a quick perusal shows Box Brown taking multiple nominations, but honestly [web]comics and [indy]comics are pretty indistinguishable these days, so pert-near everybody on the Ignatz list is one of our tribe. Well done, everybody.

Oh, and speaking of the con this weekend, Bal’mer is home base for Super Art Fight, which promises yet another dip into supreme weirdness, plus Anamanaguchi. If you can’t make it to the Harvey Awards ceremony, this is a perfectly cromulent alternative.

• So about five minutes ago my phone spontaneously rebooted — technology, right? Anyway, I’m going to convince myself that in the couple of minutes that it was power-cycling and re-acquiring a signal, Senator Joseph Lieberman’s office was trying their darndest to get in touch with me regarding the message I left yesterday. And naturally, because things are very busy for the senator’s press office, they didn’t have time to leave a voicemail when they were unable to get through to me.

  Otherwise, I’d have to report that they haven’t yet produced a comment regarding Chad Love-Lieberman’s reasonably blatant art thievery. To see some of the artwork that this stellar example of humanity was claiming as his own, make with the clicky, and if you can identify the actual creator of any of the uncredited art, let the editors of that site know, as they want to give proper credit.

• Hey, you know who we haven’t heard from in a while? Steve Troop. I wonder if he has anything going on these days?
  

  Steve Troop wrote:
  Hi Gary!

  I guess he does!

  I started updating Melonpool again as a weekly Sunday-style strip as I move toward filming the puppet movie. So far, I’ve had 13 updates since the relaunch on May 20. My plan is to keep it as a weekly until filming is completed and then bring it back as a daily once the film is in the final editing stages — to kind of ramp up to the debut.

  Steve’s not the only webcomicker to dip his toes into movie making, but he might have been the first; Melonpool the comic, Melonpool the excuse to play with puppets, and Melonpool the movie to combine all the other Melonpools have been competing for Troop’s attention for most of the past dozen years, and the long journey for at least one of them has some ultimate destination in sight. Take a peek at his originals for sale (at a discount!) and maybe buy a few seconds worth of videotape, won’t you?

• Speaking of buying, first book jitters are something every serious webcomics creator has to confront someday; this week it’s Julie Faulkner, who launched the first collection of her gym-and-trainers themed Promises, Promises earlier this week. Starting Tomorrow is actually available today, or you could hit up Faulkner for a copy at Fan Expo (next weekend) or Word on the Street (late September), both in Toronto.

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¹ Who has publicly asked for people to vote for Kate Beaton and not himself in the Best Online Comics Work category; if he were to actually win, I look forward to hearing about an epic rant, followed by Kurtz dropping the mic and leaving the stage.

² Welcome back, Tom. Heard you’ve had a fun summer.