Long night on the ambulance, not very awake. One piece of news: Chris Yates finished constructing Baffler! #1500, the most difficult puzzle of his career (it took the master maker/assembler a full eight days to put it together). Key stats:

• 804 pieces
• 9.92/10.0 difficulty, which Yates once told me was a logarithmic scale
• over 6 kg
• eight levels
• $1750 + shipping/handling

Yes, that’s nearly two thousand American dollars; it’s not merely a puzzle, it’s practically a piece of furniture. The Staircase is available for purchase by one lucky person starting at 4:00pm MDT (GMT-6) today; first to complete the purchase wins, everybody else is a chump.

No theme today. Sorry.

• Reminder: Anya’s Ghost, Astronaut Academy, and Level Up all release today. Reiteration: Anya’s Ghost remains the best comics I’ve read all year.
• Scott Kurtz continues to mend (and occasionally trip all the balls) from his busted rib, leading to a searing pain in his drawing arm and an impromptu guest week-or-two. It’s pretty cool, actually, because today’s guest strip pointed me back to a webcomic I discovered earlier this year, then promptly lost the link for — Frankenstein Superstar, by John Hazard. It’s still a bit too new to do a comprehensive review on, but I was upset with myself for not being able to follow its progress, and now I can. So I guess that’s a win for everybody except Scott’s ribs? Feel better soon, Scott.
• Jon Rosenberg is getting back on the webcomicking horse, combined with the caring for infant twin sons horse, and is probably pretty darned glad to have taken the visiting the infant twin sons in the PICU horse out to pasture and let it run free, never to return¹. To celebrate, he’s got a new print and t-shirt sale goin’ on (not to mention a considerable number of expenses, cf: infant twin sons).
• Words of Wisdom² from John Allison’s blog today, on the topic of how you present yourself; this one is important enough to quote at length:
  

  On more occasions than I care to count, someone has come up to me at a comic show, pressed their little photocopied effort into my hand, and said “it’s not very good”. And 49 times out of 50, I manage to stop myself saying “then why on earth should I read it”.

  Your work may not be of a professional standard, it may be loose, “sophomoric”, poorly lettered, imperfect — it may be flat out rotten — but you finished something, and if you finished one thing, you can finish another, and you will improve.

  Self-criticism is a valid exercise and a vital component of improvement. But it is not an attractive attribute to strangers.

  Out and about, on the scene, I want to see you beaming with pride that you made it out of that room with all your teeth and most of your sensibilities intact. [emphasis original]

Very little to add. If you’re the sort to judge your cartooning skills as inferior to John Allison’s, it’s not a leap to judge your social skills as being the same; you’d leap at the opportunity to follow his cartooning advice, so give his personal interaction advice a damn good listen.

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¹ Or possibly shooting that particular horse with high-yield atomic weaponry, you can never be sure, and it was a bastard of a horse anyway.

² The capital-w is warranted, as these words are very wise.

Bobwhite comes full circle, but at the same time, Magnolia Porter launches Monster Pulse (MWF, with an eight page extravaganza of first-day goodness). It’s the story of Bina Blum, derided for her imagination and fascination with dinosaurs, and the weird spectral force that appears to take up residence within her immediate vicinity and manifest as a monstrous critter. I’m guessing misunderstandings and beastie-wrangling are on deck, and can’t wait to find out if I’m right.

Meanwhile, not being content with launching a new webcomic the very day that her previous effort wrapped, Ms Porter teamed up with Kel McDonald for Dracula Mystery Club. n&eacut;e Cocksuckers (per a discussion at NEWW2), renamed (because honestly, they’ll get less grief for being two young women working on a comic that’s not called Cocksuckers, per a discussion at MoCCA Fest). And did I say two young women? It’s three young women, with Amanda Lafrenais contributing toning and websitery. Look for story pages to start on Thursday.

• Not entirely webcomics related, but how can I resist? The ToonSeum (Pittsburgh’s contribution to the preservation of all we hold dear) sent along the best press release of the year:
  

  Joe Wos, Executive Director of the ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, is taking his show on the road. Best known for his work as a cartoonist and storyteller working with children and families, Joe is giving his work a grown up twist! The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California will be offering a special wine/beer tasting and cartooning workshop for adults!

  This is the first time the museum has offered this unique pairing. Guest will enjoy a flight of beers courtesy of Lagunitas Brewery and wine from Balletto Vineyards while learning to draw their own cartoons. [emphasis mine]

  I’ve remarked many times that I should learn to draw and pick up at least some rudimentary cartooning skills at some point in my life. My failure to do so is only partly because of the fullness of my schedule; to be honest, more of it is me dreading the absolutely terrible output that will accompany early efforts, perhaps for a long, long time. But boozing up while first learning? That’s got to lower the inhibitions and get you started down the road. If only I lived on the Left Coast, I would be at this SO HARD you guys. The fun kicks off at 6:30pm, 17 June (that’s a Friday) at the Schulz Museum; $15.00 for members, $20.00 for non-members.

• I have news of another melding of previously-unmelded areas of expression. Since cartoons + booze is taken, how about webcomic + stage presentation?
  

  This year’s Ottawa Fringe Festival will feature a stage adaptation of Subnormality by Winston Rowntree. Conceptualized by Marie Robertson, writer of last year’s Love In The Time of Harlequin and adapted from the original text by Sarah McEown and Sarah Newton, the show is based on multiple scenes pulled directly from the webcomic.

  Show-specific information may be found at Subnormalshow, and tickets are available at the OFF website for a half-dozen presentations between 17 and 26 June.

• Some end True. Bobwhite wraps up on Monday, I trust you’ll be there?
• It’s true, Mako — bad guys laugh when you do math at them, but at least you aren’t wearing a WHAM! t-shirt. I know that I said recently that I was trying not to go on and on about AGAHF, but then Otter sent me this in an email with the subject line GARY YOU WILL FOLLOW THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, so I feel compelled. Not sure why, really, but I honestly don’t want to spend today harvesting cow lips. Instead, it appears I’ll spend today in an archive dive of a new-to-me webcomic. So thanks?
• Blah blah blah, filler, comment, Penny Arcade movie deal. Little surprised it wasn’t Lookouts, actually, but The New Kid probably has more story hooks. Here’s the thing — that strip ran last October, call it seven months ago. Hollywood doesn’t buy movies based on six panels, so there was a whole lot of story brainstorming that went on that we haven’t seen, along with visual treatments, more than like. That’s incredibly fast work, so the question is how long has somebody in LA had a first-look deal?

  My guess is that Khoo’s had a deal in place for a couple years that every once in a while, somebody calls up and says, “Hey, have your guys do 20 pages of story and art concepts on these three or four strips” and this is the first one that paid off. That means it’s my guess that we see more options announcements in the future — remember, there’s no promise of a movie yet, Paramount “picked up the rights” and lots of movies never get made. Heck, according to my faded copy of Fortune and Glory, you can almost do better sellinng options that don’t get made into movies ’cause once the rights expire you can sell ’em again to somebody else. In any event, Hollywood has a couple new concept merchants to deal with.

Warm, bright, sunny, low humidity, and just hours after an anxious afternoon/evening of tornado watches. Oh weather, can you be any crazier/more wonderful?

• It’s less than a week until three books by noted webcomickers drop — one may stoke anticipation for Anya’s Ghost, Astronaut Academy, and Level Up here, here, and here, respectively. Come Tuesday, you can find out if I was right about them or not¹.
• Heroes Con kicks off this weekend (starting tomorrow, actually) in Charlotte, NC, and while their website seems to list a considerable number of guest cancellations (including Frank’n’Becky and Tyson Hesse), one has to expect a certain amount of last-minute plan changing and it’s nice to know in advance of the show rather than be disappointed, yes? In any event, Fleen Faves heading to the show include Danielle Corsetto, Dustin Harbin, David Malki !, Carla Speed McNeil, Andy Runton, Dean Trippe, Joel Watson, and Jim Zubkavitch. Tell ’em I said hi.
• If you find yourself in the opposite of North Carolina (generally agreed by most authorities to be Toronto), you can still get your fill of webcomics people, as Ryan North² will be speaking tomorrow night on comics as part of a lecture series that invites people from completely different fields to talk on completely different things to spark creativity. As the website of The Treehouse Group states:
  

  3 people × 3 topics = 1,000 ideas

  North will be joined by John Paul Morgan (speaking on the process of invention) and Nathalie Desrosiers (speaking on Twitter and civil liberties).

• Finally, it has been established in the past that if there’s one thing that gets under the skin of Kate Beaton, it’s that comics cliche of the woman twisting her spine to show of breasts and buttocks simultaneously (and a rightly-so under-skin getting, as it’s a truly ridiculous and pandering pose). Exhibit A.

  It has also been established that when something does get under the skin of Kate Beaton, that something is in for a cartoon dope-slapping. Exhibits B, C, and D. Just in case you ever wondered, Huh. Can cartoon high-heeled shoes ever truly be sarcastic? the answer is “yes”.

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¹ I was.
² The linguistically pedantic amongst you may object to the term “webcomics people” being applied to Ryan North, who forms but one webcomics person. However, these pedants are overlooking the fact that Ryan North easily qualifies for a plural term, much like how the Queen of England uses “we” and “us”. Ryan North is, after all, both the Toronto Man-Mountain and the Nexus of All Webcomics Realities. Deal with it.

Still tethering, so let’s do this quickly:

• In re: that ol’ LICD Kickstarter thang, Ryan Sohmer opines:
  

  Holy balls. We just sailed right through 75k. Looks like I’ve got a pilot to make.

• First informed of via the Twitterings of Kean Soo, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the utterly gorgeous Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (by Tony Cliff), which started a few days ago and is more gorgeous than anything not born directly from the hand of Hergé. The first four pages of the online graphic novel are now available for your perusal, and hoo boy if that splash panel on the home page doesn’t leave me waiting for the action to kick in. This is going to be one to watch, folks.
• Have been obsessively re-reading the copy of Save Yourself, Mammal which Zach Weiner was kind enough to gift me with just prior to the long weekend. Not that it’s a long read (even the most appreciative of Mr Weiner’s fans will be tearing through the pages as warp speed, devouring the gags), but there’s a Choose Your Own Adventure scattered through the first 65 or so pages, and I haven’t achieved all the endings yet. First time through, though? I became a doctor that performed surgery with a katana — it’s hard to top that.
• Finally, the best news I’ve heard all year, from Mr Jon Rosenberg:
  

  Yes! My babies are coming home from the hospital today!

  A few months ago we didn’t know if they were going to survive, and now they are healthy and adorable. Modern medical science is amazing.

  Babies are finally home, safe and sound. For the first time since Feb. I don’t have to go to a hospital tomorrow.

  There’s a photo of young Messers Rosenberg which you may wish to enjoy before the honeymoon’s over. Because babies, they change things:

  Survived our first night with the twins. Not to imply that they are trying to assassinate me. But I did find a tiny piece of piano wire.

  Well done, Team Babies.

Slow, but awesome. We’ll just put a few things here and call it good.

• There were webcartoonists at this weekend’s NCS Reuben Awards, and lo it was good. Dave Kellett, Kate Beaton, and Kris Straub all gave their takes on the evening’s goings-on, with Scott C contributing both semiphotobombery and a killer sketch of Scott Kurtz (seriously, Scott’s drawings of people look more like those people than the people themselves do). For deeper analysis, Straub had some pretty inspiring thoughts; it was terrific to watch all of this happen (at a distance), and it’s thrilling to see that the long Print vs Web cold war has had its Nixon goes to China moment. Things only get better from here.
• Speaking of Kate Beaton (which one cannot do too often), Drawn and Quaterly has released the cover of her next book, due in October. It’s pretty.
• Correction to a post last week — I remarked that there were five contenders left in the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, which turns out not to be correct. Michael Payne has pointed out that although Mike Stevens is still listed as in the running on the main DGIMC page, in the forums it is confirmed that Stevens fell out of the competition on 19 May. We at Fleen regret the error and congratulate the four remaining competitors: Payne, Andrew Rothery, R Smith, and Brad “Ladies, Please, He’s Taken!” Guigar. One may note at this time that the remaining four could opt to split the prize money and still come out more than ten times ahead of their original $20 buy-in.

I’m gonna make this quick, because it’s a holiday weekend starting. Gonna get me some prime cuts of meat from my favorite restarauteurs, do some damn grilling¹. Don’t expect an update on Monday, I’ll be doing the parade thing with my EMT cohorts.

In the meantime, one tiny little followup for you, one that I’m slightly surprised by. I tossed out an idea for a Machine of Death 2 story, and I’ve gotten feedback that cracks are being taken at it, including from one of the five remaining contestants in the Daily Grind Ironman Challenge. I am very much looking forward to reading anything that y’all come up with, and positively giddy that something developed from my little brainbomb might (probably not, let’s be realistic, there’s a lot of entrants) make it into MoD2.

And with that, I’m outta here. Enjoy the long weekend, everybody!

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¹ Lump charcoal 4 lyfe, yo.

Okay, so apparently there’s a better answer to the big question of How do I get noticed? from yesterday’s posting than the one I came up with. Consider: Raina Telgemeier, her husband Dave Roman, Becky Dreistadt and James Kochalka (and who knows how many more) are all webcomickers, and were all born today.

Add in TopatoCo impressario Jeffrey Rowland (born four days ago), Dead Winter’s Dave Shabet (born three days ago), and TopatoCo Vice President of Kicking Your Ass Holly Post (born two days ago) and you’ve got a sure-fire method for gettin’ noticed — simply go back in time and convince your parents to give birth to you sometime between 22 and 26 May. You’re welcome.

• Love [web]comics? Live in or near San Francisco? Want to talk comics with a couple of high school teachers? For those of you that are scratching your heads at that third item, would it help if I mentioned the teachers in question are Thien Pham and Gene Luen Yang, creators of Level Up, a YA graphic novel that got the Fleen Seal of Approval? Yang and Pham will be appearing at Cartoon Art Museum on 25 June (that’s a Saturday) from 1:00 to 3:00pm for a cartooning workshop; they’ll be talking about their collaborative process, signing books, and drawing with attendees. Free with paid admission to CAM, which is like seven bucks (three, if you’re under 13 years of age), so go grab some lunch and make a day of it.
• Latest autobio comics to catch my eye — Breena Wiederhoeft’s Easel Ain’t Easy² — which has the loose, scribbly style that makes everybody in it look like somebody you know. As Wiederhoeft is yet another Portland-based cartoonist, it’s amusing to cross-reference the sense of place you get from EAE against that of, say, DAR! (hint: there’s a lot more dicks and farts in DAR!).

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¹ Third week of August.

² Know what else ain’t easy? Pimpin’.

Three mentions in four updates puts this blog in danger of becoming All Schlock All The Time. I will forgive you this time oh my Evil Twin, since we are talking about the occasion of your 4000th consecutive daily update without any skips, fillers, guest strips or other aberrations. I believe that aside from the rarefied company of strips with a 4K count, yours may be the only one to claim no hiatuses, missed updates, etc. for the entire length of its run.

The other webcomickers mentioned in this post don’t have 4000 daily updates, but I’m guessing that they all intend to one day, one way or another. Let’s give ’em all due attention, shall we?

• I have a dilemma. Consider the following email from Jean Tripier:
  

  My new webcomic Travelogue is out! It is a unique webcomic with 1) great art 2) real stuff and 3) maybe some funny ones as well. You can have a look at http://www.tripier.com/travelogue/

  Now consider this screencap of the of website in question. In case you can’t read it, the text waaaay down in the lower left corner reads:

  © 2011 Tripier.com. Loading… Oops! You need JavaScript turned on to view this site!

  Now I realize that not everybody has my somewhat fanatic level of reluctance to enable JavaScript for anything but the most trusted websites, and then only if absolutely necessary. Consider me an anomaly in that regard, I’m fine with it (as I am due to my choice of Opera for web browser). But to have a site entirely dependent on active content, with no compelling reason given, not even a hint of what I’m missing to try to convince me that the hidden treasures are worth whatever incremental risk executable content might bring to bear on my computer?

  I want to believe that Travelogue is everything that Tripier claims it is … but sorry, no. Want to reach the widest possible audience? Minimizing the use of heavyweight websites and unnecessary technology, and including at least a teaser for those that don’t meet your technological standards are mandatory. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about Travelogue in the future but for now, I’m afraid it’s a non-starter.

• In a similar vein, consider the following email from GC Goebel:
  

  Hey webcomics people, two things:

  One: check out my site. It’s newish, funny and no one goes there. Like a nude internet cafe.

  Two: how do you guys find out about new comics (besides shameless emails of this sort)? Where am I supposed to get the word out? I’ve posted on a couple webcomic directories and set up a deviant art profile, but figure I must be missing something other folks know about. Thoughts?

  For those that find item One compelling, the site in question may be found at usefulinfocomic.com; for me, unsolicited links that promise, hint at, or reference nudity automatically increase the ol’ index of suspicion, so I haven’t been. As for item Two, the answer is lots of ways. The shameless email has a long and honorable history, as do other methods that are pretty hit or miss:

  • Project Wonderful ad link trails (pick the best looking/ugliest/most intriguing PW ad on a page I frequent, click on it; repeat the process wherever I end up. Anything catches the eye within five or six hops, investigate)
  • Eavesdropping (about a year ago, I happened to be talking to Danielle Corsetto while one of Randy Milholland’s fans was talking to him right next to us; she mentioned her webcomic which I eventually checked out, and which has surprised me a couple of times — if you want to see an atypical treatment of a strip club and the ladies who work there, check out KK Skipper’s [usually NSFW] Pink Parts)

  But mostly I rely on the work of the late Claude Shannon, a personal hero of mine, a man who likely never read a webcomic in his life. It was by studying Shannon’s work in Information Theory that I realized something that has served me well in life: Consistency is more important that correctness. Buckle up kids, this will take a little while.

  Here’s our man, an aspiring geek studying hell of communications systems at nerd school in the late ’80s when his mind is blown by a thought experiment: two weather forecasters broadcast each night at 10:00pm. One is right about the following day’s weather 9 times out of 16, the other one is flat-out wrong 15 times out of 16. However, the latter conveys more information than the former, even with that dismal record.

  Because Mr Wrongpants is so consistently wrong, a viewer of his broadcast can comfortably do the opposite of whatever he says and be confident that it’s the right course of action. Ms Prettygoodpants, on the other hand, is only a bit better than random chance; if you follow her advice you’ll be disappointed nearly as often as not.

  Finding the pattern, and being able to map that pattern to your own needs, is the key. For years when I took a newspaper subscription, I would eagerly read the movie reviews because the staff reviewer was of great use to me — she was so stunningly pseudo-highbrow, so amazingly full of herself, that in short order I learned that certain dismissive phrases from her would guarantee me a good time at the theater and that anything she gave three or more stars to was likely to be pandering Oscarbation. I hated reading her horribly constructed writing, but she was incredibly useful to me.

  A’course, it’s better to find consistency that matches my tastes in a predictable way rather than sitting in opposition, so I make a habit of reading reviewers who are good writers — think Matt Zoller Seitz, the staff of the AV Club, Heidi Mac, the Spurge, and Chris Sims. None of them has an exclusively webcomic focus, but you know what?

  I know a lot of webcomickers and other people with a pretty heavy webcomics focus. A lot a lot. They aren’t full-time review types, but that doesn’t matter as long as I have an idea of their tastes. Some have tastes that match mine, some don’t, but I can use their mentions of what they like or don’t like as a guide for what I’m likely to like or not like.

  While that answers the very specific question of how I find new webcomics to read, it doesn’t do much for the followups, which address how a creator can spread the word of their own work. And for that, I don’t have a good answer. Actually, I have a very good answer, but it’s not in the form of Follow these steps, pay for ads in this place, and you will see x number of followers, plus or minus y percent. It’s simply: Do good work.

  Do comics so good that people get so excited that they can’t help but talk about them¹. When trying something new, most people place the greatest weight on the opinions of those that are known to them, so it’s a matter of getting outside your immediate circle of acquaintances to friends of friends, then friends of friends of friends. Eventually, one of those friends of friends of friends of friends is friends with Ryan North and he links you and it spreads like wildfire from there.

  But the key point isn’t Ryan North². It’s Do good work. Or, to put it another way (and I’m here paraphrasing either Greg Dean and/or Matt Boyd): Don’t suck; if you do suck, stop sucking as quickly as possible. Strike that chord with your audience, and the notice will follow.

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¹ Case in point: I have had to stop myself from writing about A Girl And Her Fed‘s recent plot points about twelve times in the past month because I find it that good, that compelling, and I want to talk about it that much, but even Otter would give me shit if I turned into her own personal nonstop PR flack. Maybe. Probably. I have to stop speculating or she’ll have her vengeance.

² This may be the only context in which that statement is true.